June 15th, 2020From an old potting shed
It’s funny how the sight of something familiar can bring memories of a long- distant past, flooding back – and we, of a certain age, have plenty of them.
And so it was last week, when my son-in-law Evan Jones, emailed me several photos he had taken of a nifty, fold-away potting bench he had constructed for a crammed walkway. As well as being beautifully constructed, the bench solves the problems of space with a proper work surface and, most importantly, somewhere to have plants, soil and pots close at hand.
Apart from ticking another box in Evan’s “to do” list, it has provided an answer to a recent request for a design for building one.
The photos set me thinking back to the mid-1940s and my grandfather’s nursery when my father spent whatever spare time he had, helping him to return the now rundown property from a wartime vegetable garden back to a commercial business.
I loved pottering around with my Pa who was, by this time, quite elderly, with time and patience to open the eyes of an eager six-year-old to the wonderful world of plants and nature.
Apart from anything else I delighted most in “helping” him in his “potting shed” – at that time a rickety old table in the corner of a bush shade house, covered in piles of sand and soil, surrounded by stacks of terracotta pots of all sizes.
(In later years I came to hate the sight of those *&%?# pots when I spent many pre-plastic hours after school with a tub of cold water and a piece of hessian sacking, recycling them.)
But it was there that he would tell me the names and explain habits and requirements of each plant as we planted seeds and made cuttings. He never trusted me with his sharp knife, so I had the job of placing each cutting into pots of sand, making the holes with pointed “dibber” stick and then carefully watering them in with a watering can.
There was only one small glasshouse at the time, so the pots were placed into large wooden crates and covered with recycled window frames.
Grandpa was a genial little man who, when dressed up in his best suit, with his derby hat and cane, later reminded me of Charlie Chaplin. I only ever heard him raise his voice once – incidentally to my father. After I, with all the best intentions in the world – to save space in crowded glass frame – carefully removed about 20 small fuchsia cuttings from individual pots into one large one – totally innocent of the fact that he had spent considerable time and money to start a collection of rather rare and newly imported varieties.
By the time I was lifted midway through high school to work full time in the nursery, the potting shed had evolved into a separate building with steel-clad benches replete with cutting boards, hoppers of compost, soil, sand and pots. The window glass frames were replaced by a large glasshouse with under-bench steam heating.
As for me, I have “Hobbiton”, a spacious (but tall folk-unfriendly under balcony area with plenty of space for storage of pots, sand, soil plus gardening equipment… but, as yet, only a wheelbarrow for a bench.
I think, once solitary confinement is at an end, I think I’ll invite the family up for a weekend and tell Evan to bring his plans and tools. There’s plenty of suitable timber down there.
Got a gardening question? Ask Glen. Email glenzgarden@gmail.com
