If you build it, he will come. Or maybe not, if it is a plant centre in rural East Anglia, and it's a wet, cold Monday in September. Not many people did come. Certainly not all those customers who, on a balmy June day say Gosh, what a marvellous place to work, I'd love to have your job.
The owner announced, as we did our early morning briefing for the day ahead, that the garden was so slippery, we'd better not let anyone round, given it shut for winter at the end of September anyway. The only people I'm aware of who wanted to go round today were the local RSPB manager and her assistant, who were wearing full waterproofs and walking boots, and the manager simply let them in. If I were on holiday, or had travelled a long way to see a garden, as we just have been and did, and it was suddenly declared closed when its website and the RHS guide said it would be open, not because of a major cataclysm like the 1987 hurricane but just because after a couple of days of rain it was slippery, I'd be extremely peeved. I was therefore rather relieved not to be faced with anyone asking for a garden ticket, since by the next time I go to work we'll be in October, and the garden will be officially closed anyway, slippery or not.
There was a minor crisis over a till discrepancy from last week, when the proprietors were on holiday. A cheque or voucher transaction for £40 wasn't backed up by any paperwork. The owner thought it had probably been a voucher since we gave 50p change. My colleague peered inside the bowels of the till and found a scrunched up voucher still stuck there. Mystery solved.
The rain began to get into the workings of the back door, that was mended back in the spring at vast expense to the management, and it began to not shut automatically, especially when it was raining. Pools of water blew into the shop as the doors stuck open, and there was a cold draft.
The enormous chiller cabinet that the new cafe people have now installed didn't sound too happy either, labouring away with a tremendous rumbling noise. I think there must be a problem with the compressor. My colleague said hopefully that all chillers make a noise but I don't think they do, not that much. The tea room at Alnwick certainly didn't sound as though it was next to a lorry park.
I managed to make one customer happy by identifying from a description over the phone the bulb she was looking for, having seen it pictured on a birthday card, as a crown imperial fritillary, Fritillaria imperialis. She had got hold of the name Corona, which is half way there. I was so happy to have somebody to talk to, as a change from wandering around in the drizzle weeding pots of herbaceous plants, that for good measure I told her how she would never be in danger of digging it up by mistake, because the bulbs smelt of fox, and the fact that a drop of nectar hangs permanently at the base of every petal, a legacy according to legend of the fritillary's shame at having refused to hang its head at the crucifixion. This may have been more information than she wanted.
Later on, as I was beginning to feel that the last half hour was going to drag very slowly, I answered a call from a man from Beaconsfield who had called to find out whether we had any Magnolia campbellii. We had two, of different sizes, and this led on to a long and happy conversation about magnolias, the best size to plant shrubs and trees, the importance of finding the right soil and site, and notable gardens worth visiting for their magnolia collections. I think he will come and buy a magnolia, and that he was genuinely pleased to talk about trees with a fellow enthusiast. If your family and friends aren't that interested, and lots of people aren't, then if you don't work in horticulture that doesn't leave many people to swap tree stories with. He had a four acre arboretum, tiny compared to Howick, but there again land prices are higher in Beaconsfield than in rural Northumberland.
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