free advice

It was baking in the plant centre.  Fortunately, and surprisingly, trade was brisk, and I was kept busy on the till and out of the sun for much of the hottest part of the day without the manager having to manufacture excuses for me to stay indoors.  The owner had a stand at a plant fair yesterday, and almost developed sunstroke after spending the day out in the open, even wearing a hat, so her instructions to us first thing this morning were to be very careful.

Just as I'd finished watering the owner flagged me down to help a customer who needed some advice.  She was carrying a sketch pad under her arm, which turned out to contain the outline of a garden with plant names pencilled in round the edges, supplemented by photographs.  She had just moved to a house whose garden was a blank, and wanted advice on what to plant.  A friend of a friend who dabbled in garden design had drawn her a plan, and she had some existing plants (propagated or lifted from her old garden.  I never quite gathered) which she intended to use, supplemented by a list of new plants that she wanted.

My mind initially boggled.  Our garden was never designed on paper, and I don't consider myself a designer.  I got very high marks in the only design exam I ever sat, a Year Two module at Writtle, and rather low marks in the design assignment, which suggests I am better at talking about design than doing it (though the low marks in the assignment were partly because the tutor didn't like my handwriting on the plans).  I designed my brother's small garden, at his request, and it took getting on for half a week, though I did do him a colour plan (complete with dodgy handwriting) and written briefing.  The amount of design input I could provide in a quick chat in the back of the shop seemed limited.

Once we got started it wasn't as difficult as I'd feared.  Her list of plants was sensible for the site and she had realistic ideas about maintenance and what she wanted from the garden, so I started in one corner and worked my way round her draft plan, checking whether each plant would be happy with the conditions in that part of the garden and how it would look with its neighbours.  By the end of it we had a yellow themed area, and a purple and silver patch, and she seemed to like my suggestion that bringing the planting out from the fence at one point would make it more interesting than sticking to a peripheral border all the way round, and that the children (they must have been grandchildren) would probably like it if their play area were somewhat enclosed and more private.  It was a slight shock when, having sorted out that side of the house, she turned the page of the sketch pad and there was another map of the other half of the garden, but by then I was on a roll, and she mainly wanted advice on gravel gardening, which is one of my specialist subjects.  So she was very happy and grateful for my help, and it's just as well that most customers don't require that degree of hand-holding, as we couldn't do it, without increasing staffing levels about fifty-fold.

Somebody who'd been to Chelsea wanted to know if we sold Orlaya grandiflora, but once I'd explained that she would need to grow it from seed, preferably fresh seed sown in situ, and that it would die after flowering but seed itself about, and that the seedlings were quite easy to recognise, and in short, no, we didn't stock it, she went off the idea.

The unhappiest creature on the premises was probably the dog.  Far from blooming during pregnancy, she looked hot, heavy and distinctly apprehensive.

Addendum  On checking my e-mails when I got home I found that I was not the only person to have decided not to go to the beekeepers' meeting on Saturday.  Numbers were low, and the Committee is going to have to try and work out why that is.  It is very disappointing for the hosts when not many people show, and makes them less likely to be willing to do it again, so I now feel bad that I should have gone.  The trouble is, I know why I didn't go, which is that I'd been running around like a loony all month, and needed a weekend off.  Sometimes you just can't do everything.