Need an antidote to our times? Sow a garden, reap the rewards
I live in a mews in central London. These are the places where the owners of grand houses would have once kept their horses and carriages – two-floored buildings at the backs of posh residences with space upstairs for a groom or a stableboy to live.
Over the years these petite properties were converted into garages, workshops and then homes. Extra floors were added. In our mews there are 30 such houses and many still offer hints of their former lives – doorways with tall, bricked arches to allow for a big old horse to be manoeuvred inside for the night.
Many mews in London are dead ends. Ours finishes in a passageway wide enough for bicycles and pedestrians to cut through but not cars. It means that the road is quiet and residing behind those big old grand houses can make you feel as though you are tucked away in a secret valley. Yet I could walk to a bar in Soho in 20 minutes. Though, seeing as I’m writing this at 06.30, that might be a little unwise. I’ve got stuff to do.
Free of traffic, the street has evolved over the time that I’ve lived here. For a start, it has become quite shaggy. A few years ago, people started putting pot plants outside their homes, hoping that their charges wouldn’t get nicked – and, yes, a few have been unwillingly rehoused, usually by a tipsy youth, nothing sinister. Then the pots got bigger, banana plants with leaves like flapping elephant ears took up residence and handsome silver birches stretched ever taller.
I love plants and gardening – an inherited trait – so when a neighbour asked whether I would help them sort the front of their house, I jumped at the chance. I have now aided – colonised – five properties on the street. And with a hosepipe ban in parched London in play, that’s a lot of watering cans. But each night, as I quench the plants’ thirst, I wave to neighbours doing the same and chat to people passing by. Some soil, some shrubs, that’s all. But it’s time off screen and with no real deadlines and, certainly, no crap AI-generated emails demanding answers.
I sense that we are at an inflection point where more and more people are wanting to find something – anything – where they can use their hands and shelter from the blandishments of technology. This week I had dinner with a successful PR who has just completed his first tailoring course. He showed me a picture of the calico shirt that he made and smiled the smile of a man who might have found his calling. I also caught up with a banking friend who told me that he had thrown it all in and was becoming a gardener (he’s a skilled plantsman). Breakfast with another PR who, after his summer holiday, said that he would be taking a day off each week to do a landscaping course. People finding an antidote to our times, some with a pair of scissors, others with secateurs.
But if you are unsure of where to find your tonic, let me recommend adding a plant or two to your life. In these small acts of nurturing, of aiding and cajoling, you can find all you need to reset your day.
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