It was my turn to swop places. No longer the garden visitor but rather the gardener. With our garden not being finished we were not ready to enter. However, it is to support the local community so we relented. I’m glad we did. So, with 20 other village gardens, we had inumerable visitors. I could say that I gave some useful advice after 62 years of amateur and professional gardening. The recompence is that the visitors taught me so much. That reminds us that there is a wealth of knowledge out there. Ann told me that I was animated all day and constantly talking. In part that was because the event reminded me of when I was a walk leader in Cumbria. That said, they were mostly cemetery walks. The older people visiting Bradwell Open Gardens put me back into my 45 years in the cemetery world.

Tiring day

We put up our card outside showing where were were on the map of all the gardens. Attached was a red balloon, which I blew up with some difficulty. Visitors arrived from 10am to past 4pm. They were from places including Sheffield, Chesterfield, St. Albans and Marple. To open the garden you can just leave the gates ajar and you don’t need to meet anybody. However, Ann or I tried to talk to every visitor even though that was often impossible. It was lovely to be in the gardening bubble, talking to like people. The frustrations of gardening, the experiments, they understand it all. And I was always in listening mode because somebody always knows something you do not. We ended up tired but relaxed.

Bradwell Open Gardens

There were many compliments, often about how much we had done in little over a year. Some suggested they will be back next year to see how the garden has developed in that time. That created a little stress. Will I still be fit and well and able to garden next year? Can I create all the flowers next year? However, I then relaxed by digging up some potatoes and picking some beans. I checked the lettuce, now abandoned to a particularly big, hairy, caterpillar. That lettuce, and a few others, getting smaller every day. That is a garden, a place to share, not only with people but with wildlife.