The Tring Garden That Put Its Best Boot Forward

The first thing I saw on my round in Tring was a man watering a size-nine walking boot. The second was a carrot sticking out of his breast pocket.

“Emergency gardening pencil,” he explained, catching me looking. “I’ve lost the actual one.”

I leaned my pole against the wall. “Does it write?”

“Not yet. I’m trying to remain optimistic.”

His name was Oswin, and I’d come to clean the windows of his little house on Bramble Button Close. Along his front path stood an impressive collection of retired footwear, each planted with something green. There were chives in a slipper, thyme in a pair of children’s wellies and a strawberry plant spilling over a stout brown brogue.

Usually, Oswin greeted me with a cheerful report on which shoe needed repotting. That morning, beneath the jokes, he seemed distracted.

He kept looking towards his side gate.

“I’ve made rather a muddle,” he said eventually.

Beyond the gate, his back garden had been transformed. Pots stood on sturdy tables beside a broad, level path. There were fragrant herbs, soft-leaved plants and a little fountain making a pleasant plopping sound. A plate of covered buns waited by the kitchen door.

He’d invited his neighbours round that afternoon to try a garden trail. One of them, a keen gardener called Verena, had very limited sight, so he’d chosen plants that could be enjoyed by touch and smell.

Only the overnight rain had washed every word off his homemade labels.

“I used the wrong pen,” he said. “And the planting plan was on the back of an envelope. Which I put somewhere sensible.”

The carrot drooped slightly in his pocket.

He could identify most of the plants, but two trays of mint had become thoroughly mixed up, and his numbered trail now began at seven, visited three twice and finished somewhere behind the water butt.

“I wanted her to feel welcome,” he said. “Not lost.”

I started on the kitchen window while he searched indoors. Through the clearing glass, I spotted an envelope tucked beneath a bowl of wooden clothes pegs.

“That your sensible place?” I called.

It was. Unfortunately, the plan explained where everything had been yesterday, before he’d moved the tables.

Then I noticed the pegs themselves. Some had one raised wooden dot glued to them, others two or three.

“My granddaughter’s counting game,” Oswin explained.

I picked one up. “Could these mark the stops? But perhaps we ought to ask the person who’ll be using them.”

Verena arrived ten minutes later, invited over for what Oswin called an urgent mint consultation.

She listened, felt the pegs and smiled.

“Those will do nicely. And you needn’t organise the whole thing without me, you know. I’m very good at telling people where to put pots.”

She proved it, too.

While I finished the windows, she and Oswin rearranged the trail. She identified the muddled mint by gently rubbing the leaves, suggested keeping the path clear of trailing stems, and placed the fountain where its sound would mark the final stop.

By the time the neighbours arrived, every table had a peg marker. Oswin had found his pencil. The carrot had been eaten.

I stayed for a bun and watched Verena lead the first little group towards the herbs.

“Now, this one,” she said, “deserves a proper sniff.”

Oswin stood beside me, beaming at his garden through windows that finally matched his mood.

Before I left, he watered the walking boot again.

“Big day,” he said. “Can’t have it getting cold feet.”