I’ve had an amazing few days. Last Friday evening, my tiny garden was featured on Gardeners’ World! It’s a secret that I’ve been keeping since June 28, when a crew of four people arrived to make a short film about how I’ve turned my concrete yard into an urban cottage style flower garden. Director Kath, cameraman Gary, researcher Kate and a sound technician squeezed into our kitchen at 8.30 in the morning, and then it was all systems go.
I’d been approached about appearing on the programme about a month prior. I received a message on Instagram asking if I’d be interested, and I couldn’t quite believe it at first. I had to make a short ‘audition’ video, talking about the garden, how I’d changed it, and some of the plants I’m growing. The virtual tour didn’t take long, as the garden is only 12x5m! A few weeks passed and I thought probably my garden was too small to be of interest. But then I had another message saying the director was going to call me, and that they were very keen to go ahead. It felt unreal.
Of course, I went into garden overdrive. Although my plants were already underway, I had a lot of titivating to do. I repainted the fence, trellis and raised beds, imported some fresh gravel, I filled out the gaps in a few of my pots, and even bagged the blackcurrants on their branches, so the blackbirds didn’t swipe them before filming started. I watched my sweet pea tower like a hawk: was it going to topple over? I was out every night until dark on slug patrol and there was a LOT of watering, making sure that everything was going to look tip top. Finally, I felt it was as good as it could possibly be.
Strangely, I wasn’t nervous about the filming. I’m a self conscious person, but when I’m talking about my garden, I seem to go into another world. Kath, the director, also made it very easy. We’d had a long chat on the phone, and she was clear about what angle she wanted to take. She fed me lots of questions, and off I went. The hardest thing was not looking directly into the lens of the camera. That’s a no-no. We had to do a couple of retakes when I forgot, but on the whole, I felt it went pretty well and Kath seemed pleased. I have no idea how Gary managed to capture the shots in such a confined space, but he was unflappable.
One piece of amazing luck was that shortly before the crew came to our house, my brother and my cousin had digitised some old family cine films. Among them was footage of my great grandfather Walter. By day, he was a finisher in a shoe factory but in his spare time, he was a champion chrysanthemum grower. People sought out his blooms, beating a path to his small terraced house, in Northampton, which he shared with his eight children and his wife. Customers included gardeners from stately homes, who wanted his flowers in their employer’s collections. According to my aunt, the money he made went towards buying his children’s shoes. Walter’s tiny backyard was entirely filled with an enormous greenhouse, which my father remembers had a heating system, comprised of hot water pipes. I’m not quite sure where the children played!
I’d always known about Walter, who died in 1947. Aa a child, I’d been shown blurry black and white photos of him in his yard. Seeing the footage of him moving around the greenhouse, pipe between his teeth and dog Gyp at his feet was another thing entirely. I mentioned him to Kath, and explained that I felt an affinity with my relative, because of the way he had turned an unprepossessing back yard into a growing powerhouse. He was also an accomplished painter, far better than I will ever be! Kath took a memory stick of the film, and I was absolutely thrilled that a few clips were screened as part of my story.
I do wonder what Walter would have made of it all, however. He was a man of very few words, certainly not the type to make a song and dance about anything.
I’ve had so many wonderful messages and feedback following the programme. People have been incredibly kind and positive about the garden. You never know. Social media can be quite brutal and people often say things they wouldn’t necessarily express to you in person! But that hasn’t been my experience. I’ve had some lovely comments, mainly from people with small or challenging spaces, saying that it has given them hope for their own plots. I can’t ask for anything better than that.
Now normal service has been resumed. I’ve been planting seeds, cutting back grasses, reorganising pots and planting peony roots. I went to a yard sale on Sunday and acquired another large galvanised dustbin, so I’m hoping to grow more dahlias and some gladioli in that. Quite where I will shoehorn it in is another matter. But I will try!
Looking forward to some sunshine tomorrow and I’m willing on my amelanchier which I hope will soon be filling the garden with blossom.