Writing for Fun
October 2015
The Secret Garden - Pete Norman
'Bloody hell! Where do you start?'
Jimmy's summing up of the situation, accurate and very much to the point, struck a chord with us all. Four heads nodded sagely, in full agreement; only Stuart chose to give no reaction. Stuart was one of the Trust's finest – the head gardener at Hidcote and their chief trouble shooter whenever the Trust took on a situation as desperate as this one was . . . and this one was desperate and a half! This garden did not so much require a trouble shooter as a miracle worker – a fairy Godmother with a magic wand to wave and make it alright again; but there was no fairy Godmother and no magic wand, there were only very non-magical secateurs and forks in the hands of six very non-magical gardeners.
Stuart, when you get to know him, is really not that bad and I have a lot of respect for his skill and ability, but he obviously believes he is bound for better things. However, when it comes down to it, you are only ever as good as your latest job and this one, God help us, is our latest job and precisely where this one is going to end up is far from certain.
Stretching out before us from our raised vantage point on the rear terrace of Lydford Manor was the most overgrown, abandoned, derelict . . . mess of a garden I had ever seen. It was as if a funeral shroud had been spread in a thick, prickly blanket over everything: lawns, hedges and borders, leaving nothing but an amorphous mass of green, with a liberal splash of brown and black thrown in for good measure. The breeze was rippling the long grass like a stormy sea and above it all a dark sky lowered as if appreciating the sense of occasion that was required.
Stuart pulled out a photocopy of a Country Life article – it was more than thirty years old. He spread it out on the balustrade and pointed to a single grainy photograph. 'This is the only clue we have of how the garden would have looked in its heyday.'
We stared in disbelief – this was beginning to look like a 5000 piece jigsaw puzzle without the picture on the box.
'I'm afraid the original plans along with anything else that might have helped us with our restoration were probably lost in the fire that destroyed the library and most of the West wing.' He paused and then added, 'Including the unfortunate Marjorie Lydford herself.
'Luckily, her will survived the fire; it had been lodged with her solicitor. She left her entire estate to the National Trust with the request that she was to be buried in her beloved garden. Of course, the Trust was having none of that nonsense and she was buried at St Peter's.'
He filled us in on the rest of the Trust's research. Apparently Marjorie's husband, Lord Lydford, had died not long after Country Life had published their article and she had struggled bravely to keep the house and her precious garden going on her own. But after a while the money ran out; she stopped struggling and for decades the whole estate had sunk into decay. It looked more like a film location for Sleeping Beauty's castle, except that it would take more than a brave prince on his white horse to kiss it better and awaken this one.
Stuart's team of brave princes, however, was about as good as it gets in this business; we all have years of experience, all except for Jimmy, that is, straight out of college he was looking to learn by osmosis from the rest of us. Toby and Richard had come from Biddulph Grange and Claire and I had been borrowed from Goddards to help out, though looking at the enormity of the task ahead of us, we none of us had any real idea when or if we would ever be going back to our home gardens. It would be one hell of a challenge, but it would also be a once in a lifetime experience for horticulturists like us.
Stuart said, 'The Trust intends to open the house up to the public as soon as they can clean it up a little, then it can be viewed as a work in progress. By that time they expect us to have enough of the garden as possible ready to attract them in. The idea is that the gate money will help to fund the restoration.'
He sent Terry and Richard to try and uncover the parterres just under the edge of the terrace then he waved his hand vaguely at the anonymous mound in the centre of the garden. It had been just a blur in the old photograph, but it could have been a high yew hedge surrounding a small intimate hidden area. 'Roger and Claire, the 'secret garden' is all yours.'
'Jimmy, you and I get the herbaceous borders.' Almost indistinguishable in the chaos now, the photograph had highlighted twin grassy avenues and wide beds running away from the house towards the wilderness meadow. Stuart smiled. 'Should be fun. A bit like finding a ten day old lettuce in the fridge. You have to carefully peel off the manky leaves from the outside to see if there is enough of a heart to make a sandwich.' He pointed both hands up the garden. 'And we have got two very long rows of lettuces to unwrap!'
Our first job was to carve a wheelbarrow-wide track through to our 'secret garden' and then to hack out a rough path around it, defining its boundary and giving us some idea of what we were up against. The spoil mounted up fast and, in order to give us room to work, it all had to be barrowed out with monotonous regularity to the area in the wilderness designated for the bonfire. It was soul destroying work and slowed progress down to a laborious crawl.
As I carefully trimmed the elm hedge I glanced across at Claire bent over her trowel. She was a good looking girl, willowy and sinuous, her long dark hair tied back in a pony tail to keep it out of her eyes. She appeared quite delicate inside her green fleece and blue jeans and her boots looked as if she had borrowed them from her dad, but appearances can be deceptive – when the going got rough she was as tough as they came and she was always the one to set the pace we had to work to a timescale. She was the best working partner you could hope to have.
Stuart had been quite correct in his initial assessment and as we dug inwards we started to reveal yew hedges, ten feet high, which appeared to enclose a circular area maybe fifteen feet in diameter, but it was too soon to speculate on what we were likely to find within. We cut our way deeper inside the hedges, revealing, trimming back and meticulously examining each plant in turn. They turned out to be all rose bushes, planted in a wide circle around the central anonymous green lump from which a single bronze hand protruded. We both dearly wanted to push further into the centre, to expose the statue, to reveal it in all its glory, but we knew that the only way was to work slowly and methodically, so instead we concentrated on clearing the grass border which appeared to lie between the hedges and the bushes. From there it would be much easier to work inwards to the centre.
It was late on Thursday morning, just as I was considering stopping for lunch that a cry from Claire stopped me in my tracks and sent me scuttling around to her side. She was on her knees, brushing the dirt from a small stone slab about a foot square set into the ground between the stems of two rose bushes. I crouched down and peered over her shoulder as large roughly carved letters slowly came into view, 'BUNGLE'. When she looked up at me there was a sadness in her eyes that I have never seen before. I knew that she loved plants of every description and always fought tenaciously to nurture them, but she clearly loved animals with even more of a passion.
'Dog or cat?' I asked, more for something to ease the moment than anything else.
She said quietly, 'My money's on a dog.'
We both looked at the uniform gap between each of the bushes and by silent agreement we moved three feet to the right and together we worked on the next space. Slowly a second stone materialised from beneath the ground cover. As Claire brushed the dirt clear, exposing the word, she asked, 'Dog or cat?' But it was no contest - this one was clearly a dog, 'MAJOR' could hardly be anything else.
'So, she was a dog lover,' I said. 'But she must have loved them a hell of a lot to want to be buried with the little buggers!'
Stuart was delighted with our find. 'That's exactly the sort of personal touch the visitors love to see. Keep going, guys, you never know, there might turn out to be a whole pack in there.'
We worked slowly around the circle and as the area between each bush was uncovered, one after another the stones appeared: 'PRINCE', then 'BULLER' and then 'WINSTON'. With so much of the front now exposed, we could no longer resist it, we dug inwards to uncover the statue. It took hours of painstaking work, but bronze is more forgiving than plants and we could work a lot faster. It turned out to be a delicate statue of an angel, her face soft and compassionate – although a little green and mossy – her arms outstretched as if shielding the whole secret garden under the protection of her bronze wings.
Stuart was even more delighted now; the work was progressing better than he had hoped. We were all on a high and threw ourselves back into the task, determined to have as much of a show garden as possible when the gates finally opened in a few weeks time.
We continued on around the rose bushes, clearing each space in turn, but there were no more stones to find until . . .
My fork struck something hard and I scratched at the ground cover to expose it. It was another, much larger and much more elaborate stone in black marble. On it had been professionally carved in beautiful ornate letters: 'MY DARLING ANGEL SOPHIE LOUISE'.
At the same moment Claire cried out. We were only a few feet apart now and as I looked across I could see that she had recoiled with horror, her eyes wide, her hand across her mouth. In front of her was an identical stone with the inscription: 'MY SWEET LOVE ANNA MAY'.
As Claire knelt, frozen in grief, I dropped into the space between the two stones, clawing out handfuls of grass and weeds in a frenzy, but the space was empty, just a large patch of bare earth.
Two tiny graves and a blank space in between . . . we now knew exactly why Lady Marjorie had asked to be buried in her own secret garden . . .
Stuart must have heard the commotion and came running over. For once I didn't need a middle management take on this, so I rounded on him before he had a chance to object, 'You're the one in the know, Stuart, who do I speak to in the Trust? We've got to bring her home – she belongs in here.'
Stuart, however, took in the situation in an instant. 'Leave it to me,' he said, quietly. 'I know the just the man for this one.'