Fiona Veitch Smith

A Gardener’s Gospel - Week 20

I learnt gardening from my dad. When I was three we moved into a newly built house, or, as they say in these days of poor grammar, a ‘new-build’. Like most new-builds, the patch of ground attached to the house was more a builder’s dump than a garden, with broken bricks, cement powder and general rubble thinly covered by a layer of poor quality top-soil. Undeterred, or at least that’s how it appeared to my three-year-old mind, my dad set about turning the wasteland into a place where flowers could grow.

Laying the lawn

He started with the lawn because that would provide the ‘architecture’ that the rest of the garden would be built around. In the early 70’s one did not simply hire a JCB or mechanised tiller as they do now; it was shovel and spade and good, old-fashioned elbow-grease. Listen to me! I sound like my parents. Well, I suppose that’s not always a bad thing …

But back to the lawn. So while my older brother and I set out with dogged determination to dig down to Australia, my dad dug out the rubble and waste and prepared the soil for lawn-seed. I don’t remember how he managed to convince us to give up our expedition, but he did. He filled in the hole and got ready for the next step of his vision – a circular lawn. I was thrilled. No one else in the neighbourhood had a circle in their square of land, but my dad did. He stuck a stake into ‘Australia’ and tied some string around it. He then took another set of stakes and proceeded to mark out a circle.

Assigning dominion

By the next year, the 360˚ lawn was well established. (Note to self: ask Dad how he managed to keep two dogs and two kids off the lawn – I struggle with one of each!). The next step was to plant out the flower beds. Again my brother and I were involved in the process and we were each given ‘dominion’ over one corner bed. My brother never did much with his – and my dad finally took it over – but in mine he helped me plant daffodils and crocuses and tulips (yes, it was a very 70’s garden!).

Growing out of it

Once our garden was established, my dad then took on an allotment and I started to learn about growing vegetables. But a few years later, a couple of weeks after my tenth birthday, we moved to South Africa and both gardens were left behind. In South Africa my dad frequently worked away from home and for long hours so he abandoned his gardening hobby. Instead, when he could afford to, he paid for a ‘garden service’ to come in once a month to give the yard a good tidy. So my teenage years were spent without gardening.

You’ll be pleased to know that when my dad took an early retirement at 55 he returned to England and took up gardening again. He’s recently acquired an allotment too, but has had to stop digging because he’s just found a section of Hadrian’s Wall! Well, that’s what he thinks it is, and he’s waiting for English Heritage to come along and confirm it.

Growing back into it

When I got married at 25 I yearned to start my own garden. Something had been planted in me many years before, and though it had been lying dormant, it finally started to grow. But for the next seven years we lived in rented accommodation. Eventually we could afford to buy our own place and six years ago I started my own floral kingdom. It wasn’t a ‘new-build’ so I didn’t have to start from scratch, but let’s just say it wasn’t quite to my taste – the garden gnomes for a start! I joke now that I’m a secret Agnostic – a member of the Anti Garden gNome Society.

Now the three-year-old following the gardener is my daughter Megan. She loves digging and weeding and planting. Usually, I have to ‘undo’ her efforts when she’s finished her work, but she’s learning. Even if she goes her own way when she’s a teenager, I hope that the seeds of gardening have been planted in her as she watches and learns.

Setting an example

Of course, I hope that the spiritual seeds I plant in her will bear fruit too. I’m not always the best example of a gardener or a Christian and when I see Megan copying some of my negative behaviour I fall to my knees and repent – not just for her sake, but my own. But then, at times, I overhear her saying things to her teddies that tell me I’m doing something right. Like the other night when she told them: ‘we must share our money with the poor people’. And when she prays alone in her room, not realising I’m listening at the door, and thanks God for ‘everything in the whole world’. To some of us, God has entrusted children. We should be mindful of what we pass on to them.

Train a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not turn from it.
Proverbs 22:6

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