by A.K. Farrar

Created on: August 13, 2008   Last Updated: September 21, 2008

Dismissing as unworthy the suggestion that I am the biggest pest in a garden which thrives when I am absent but accepting, after several battles, there is no chance of growing watermelon living so close to a forest inhabited by wild pig - I suppose the most influential garden story I can tell is that of my father's garden.

Both my dad and my mother grew up in the cobbled brick jungle known as inner-city Manchester just after the First World War. In 1932, recently married and with the first of five children, they were re-housed in the satellite garden-city' newly named, Wythenshawe. This dream suburb had been cut out of virgin farmland and presented the opportunity of a lifetime for my father who had always (unbeknownst to his very large family) harboured ideals of pastoral bliss.

If the faded, square, Kodak black-and-white pictures are anything to go by, he made a jolly good attempt to do just that. He was spurred on by the competition of a more knowledgeable neighbour secretly seen on several occasions (if my mother is to be believed and I am afraid that is not always the case) depositing slugs over the hedge - in our direction: A neighbour who would cut grass with a pair of nail scissors (that I can confirm having seen it with my own child eyes).

A green house was bought, a grape vine planted, tomatoes grown resulting in near fights in the street if a horse should deposit the remains of its digestive processes anywhere near the competing green-fingers.

I suspect number 13 (we were number 11) had a much more disciplined and classical display but, from what I know of my father, and from those preserved pictures, dad's was a more spirited and experimental patch. There were also, as I grew up many year's later, remnants of what had once been the Golden Rod, the Rhubarb and the rainwater butt which was the final resting place of so much horse manure (put in a Hessian bag and left to infuse magnificent encouragement for both flower and veg.). Pride of place went to his lawn' as smooth as any crown bowling green and with the military stripe no self-respecting gardener would leave a patch of grass without.

In 1939 Germany invaded Poland. My father, as a member of the Territorial Army, was amongst the first to be called up and was soon sent to France as part of the B.E.F.

He must have visited home after Dunkirk yes, he was one of those evacuated from the beeches but he was soon packed off to Egypt and then on to the Far East. He did not return to England until well into 1946.

During the war, there was a poster campaign Dig for Victory. It showed a firm boot slicing into the ground in preparation for planting potatoes. I am sure it was a well intentioned idea.

And, left with three young children to feed, with various in-laws visiting and baby sitting as she went off to work on the wing-tips of Lancashire bombers in the plane-making factory, it is hard to blame my mother.

Maybe, if number 13 had also been sent off to fight and had not been in a reserved occupation, my father would have taken the shock better.

Whatever the cause, on seeing his little paradise turned over and barren, it took all heart out of my father. He never seriously gardened again. Yes, a few vegetables were grown and the wonder of English grown grapes (hard and distinctly sour) were duly paraded before the frost took them, but the grass was never striped (when it was re-sown it was a distinctly inferior blend, full of weed); rabbits were purchased and straw from their hutches blew around; the pet cat would scratch holes in the scanty flower beds and not get chased off.

I grew up knowing that, "Once upon a time, there was a garden "

It is a dream I still have.

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