“Yes, yes, it’s really great,” even though it was
a dingy mess, a plant and concrete jumble sale.
But I didn’t want to have a long conversation
about it because I always wanted to get inside,
kick off my shoes and have a wee. During one
of these doorstep pauses, when I was required to
admire for the third time that week the various
weird plants and shambolic paving, I snapped.
“Get real,” I said. “It’s a dump. That hedge
is out of control, the path is a disgrace and
the bins are in the only sunny bit. You need
to repave the whole thing, put the bins in the
shade and a bench where the sun is.”
He looked at me, stunned and hurt, and then
immediately did all the things I suggested, with
the result that the front garden is now much
chicer than the interior. The anti-bourgeois
contingent on our street still make fun of it.
They call our house “Southfork”.
I thought that would be the end of a
required interest in gardening, but after
the success of the remodel, Giles thinks I’m
actually interested in this crap. Time after
time I am dragged away from important work
such as psychoanalysing the cats to admire a
dead-looking stick in the ground or asked what
I think about a Boringus muddyorum shrub here.
And I want to say, “Listen, darling, I don’t
expect you to be interested in the Class 5P
WhatsApp group – why do I have to be
interested in the garden?” But that thought
brings home to me how horrible I truly am,
so I don’t. Instead, I go out to the garden and
let him tell me about his plans for a secateurplant just there, maybe another Pretentious
maximus growing up a trellis. He’s been toying
with the idea of a pergola. If we got a new
table and chairs, would we breakfast out here?
(Next to the festering compost? No, thanks.)
I catch the zealot’s glint in his eye and in
a moment understand the mission: I see for
myself the magical, safe place that he is trying
to create in this minuscule patch of land.
And it occurs to me then that my mum was
wrong: you don’t “get” gardening. Gardening
gets you. nListen to Giles and Esther’s podcast, Giles Coren
Has No Idea, with new episodes available every
Friday on the Times Radio app, thetimes.co.uk or
wherever you get your podcastsThe Times Magazine 53