Walking the last leg of a tube ride with time to spare, I made myself walk slowly along roads I didn’t know. It always feels like a treat, to be walking somewhere new in no rush at all. It was dusky as I crossed the river, and the houselights were warmly lit and yellow along the banks of the Thames.
Ahead, a wall of bamboo reached taller than the adjacent house, a poker straight screen so effective I would wonder any light reached the house at all.
Other exotics London has welcomed as its own dotted my path. A hardy Aloe snaked across a roadside flowerbed, its spent flower stalk still kinking above the stacked starfish leaves. Serrated but not unwelcoming, the paler crowns glowed in the fading light. The surrounding variegated euonymus seemed dull and out of place next door, the aloe looking distinctly like it had been transported directly from the bottom of the sea.
Turning a corner, an Eriobotrya japonica canopied massively above me, perfect dark leaves held crisply on its tan branches. The nubs of fruits reached out still, and I thought of my own little tree. An illicit gift from my grandma, I nurtured it from pot to ground in my small back garden, thinking I was unique in the whole of London to own such a rarity.
It didn’t take long to realise I wasn’t alone. A huge front garden specimen lives in the shadow of Olympia, and I was so excited I sent a photo to my grandma – how brilliant one day our little trees with look like this! Another is a few roads from our own, multi-stem with a raised canopy. In admiration, I have committed to a similar pruning regime in the hope of achieving such curving trunks and lush, doming canopy for my own little tree.
a year in the garden 