Gardening - Corpus

An invitation into a patient’s garden

1 September 2024 1 Comment

Lucy O’Hagan

Early in his memoir Native Son: The writer’s memoir, Witi Ihimaera introduced me to the idea that stories have a whakapapa. I had an image of a story travelling through generations of tellers and listeners, told in different places: a dinner table, a classroom, a wharenui, a road trip or perhaps as a whisper in a bed. And I imagine each teller and listener moulds that story into something that makes sense to them in their time and place.

I was recently told a metaphorical sort of story by my friend, the thoughtful and passionate GP, Nigel Thompson. It was a story that had been told to him by Richard Bolstad, who had been given the story by psychotherapist George Sweet. I don’t know Richard Bolstad at all, but if he is someone who passed a story from George to Nigel, I feel I would like him a lot.

Lost in time: some thoughts on gardening

11 May 2020 6 Comments

Gwynnedd Somerville

Over the last few weeks I have spent many hours locked down in my garden. It’s been a wonderful opportunity to do those tasks I usually avoid: clearing paths of aluminium weed, thinning banks of Renga Renga, digging out invasive anemone japonica. This rather ruthless gardening has been modulated by planting bulbs and weeding around the delicate autumn crocuses which have just started to appear. I often find myself starting one task and ending up doing another, responding to whatever takes my eye. As a result the vegetable garden remains luxuriant with weeds.

Working in the garden is a great place to ruminate about life. Recently, I found myself thinking about my maternal forebears, especially the story of my great-grandmother, whose life has always been a mystery to our family. Delving into the records of her life has helped make other family members more robust – a case of history illuminating the path ahead. I’ve been thinking, in particular, about her son, my grandfather Richard Victor McGarrigle. He was a great amateur gardener. He believed in order and routine as a basic principle, and would never have had a weed in his vegetable garden. I learnt gardening at his knee. Now I wonder about what his garden meant to him, and where his meticulous devotion to the daily tasks of looking after his plants sprung from. What were his thoughts while gardening?

The herb garden

15 October 2018 6 Comments

Beatrice Hale

As a nine and ten year old I spent six months in the local Children’s Hospital in Aberdeen. Rheumatic fever was one of the nasties at that time, and a number of the children in the ward were victims, all of us on bed rest, the treatment at that time. One method of self-amusement was reading. The Dimsie books, by Dorita Fairlie Bruce, were among the one or two books a week that my favourite aunt brought in for me.

From Dimsie Goes to School to Dimsie Grows Up and Dimsie Carries On, Dimsie has remained a favourite with me for many years.

The most influential was Dimsie Grows Up. The morality of the tale strikes me afresh every time I look at the book. Dimsie could not fulfil her ambition to become a doctor; her father had died and left very little money. Sadly, reluctantly, but determined to be cheerful and not to moan (moral message here!), Dimsie decides to join her mother in the old family home in Perthshire. She begins to travel north from her school on the south coast of England, but a train strike intervenes. A fellow traveller hires a car and several passengers abandon the train journey and drive north with him. He just happens to be a doctor who eventually takes up a practice in Perthshire. No prizes for guessing one of the story’s themes.

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The therapeutic art of weeding

19 February 2018 4 Comments

Lorraine Ritchie

Weeding is the unglamorous part of gardening. It doesn’t produce anything, Rather, it un-produces. Weeding makes things disappear, dissolve. Weeds do not end up in vases on the table to add colour and fragrance to the household, and weeders do not get their own columns in the daily papers and magazines. But, believe me, weeding is good for your health, especially if you derive the same level of satisfaction as I do from pulling, tugging and digging them out on a regular basis. Both physical and mental health is well served here.