It started happening a few months ago, when the last of the spring bulbs were cleared from the shelves: the garden centres started to fill up with all manner of toot destined to be bought, wrapped, unwrapped and vaguely grimaced at around Christmas.
I’m neither a snob nor a Scrooge, but I struggle to find much delight in those bloated commercial palaces, created to make people spend money on anything but plants. Nobody really needs a solar-powered hedgehog. And yet they persist, in part, I think, because they offer solutions to the overwhelmed. Some people like to do all their Christmas shopping in John Lewis; others like to do it in a garden centre.
The irony is that gardeners are among the hardest people to buy for. Most of what we want can’t be bought. For instance, my Christmas wishlist would consist of a predictable meteorological calendar with a good balance of rainfall and sunshine, a deep and nourishing frost, and some snow to make everything look pretty in the otherwise grey days of January. I would like an elegant Victorian cold frame filled with good, strong sweet pea seedlings and a charming hazel tower in a bright spot for them to grow up. I would love worm-filled, workable soil and a gently humming compost heap. I’d like a herb garden, prettily tended, within arm’s reach of my (first floor) kitchen. I’d like a year-long break from snails, or a modest population of song thrushes to eat them and then sing about it afterwards.
Some of these things are purchasable to those with deep pockets – the herb garden, sweet pea tower and song thrush population would necessitate my moving house. But even conveying the depth of these desires is difficult for many of us. In the years I’ve spent talking to fellow gardeners, I’ve consistently met people who are the lone green-fingered ones of the household. This means we often entertain our hopes and dreams quietly, in our own heads or near the flowerbeds. If we’re lucky, we might live with someone we can bounce these ideas off of, but in my house at least, my thoughts on what is or isn’t happening in the garden are much like my husband’s on his Fantasy Football ranking: spoken aloud, certainly, but not to an audience who really understands or, frankly, cares.
Part of the problem is that we rarely tell anyone that we quite fancy trying that new breed of cosmos, where the seed is only available from a certain nursery and yes, does cost quite a lot of money in relative terms. Then we wonder why we get given another floral pair of too-big gardening gloves. Speaking more broadly, I do think that gardening and a certain parsimony go hand in hand. We like doing things on the cheap. We like making something from nothing. Why buy plants when you can divide them? Why buy seed when you could save it?
However, earlier this year I gave some gardeners the opportunity to share their ideal Christmas gift. The results were illuminating, not least because it turns out our needs are quite simple, actually. Essentially, we all want Niwaki secateurs: Monty Don wants Niwaki secateurs; garden designers Jo Thompson and Tom Massey want Niwaki secateurs; even I wouldn’t say no to Niwaki secateurs and I already have two pairs (one for “best”, one for everything else).
But the exercise was pleasing in other ways. It prompted me to think about how you can make a gift of a garden, or of a living thing. A division of a good plant, plonked in a reused plastic tub and passed over in a carrier bag. A spare spade that was gathering dust in another’s shed, with a ribbon around its well-worn handle. A charity shop vase filled with gravel and paperwhite bulbs, promising scent and fine white petals at a time of short, dark days. An envelope of saved seeds, with somebody’s handwriting on. All things I would love to receive this year.
And if my husband is reading, then this is my ultimate Christmas wish: for a child-free hour a week to spend in the garden, and the gentle nagging to do so.
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This article appears in the 20 Nov 2024 issue of the New Statesman, Combat Zone