Lost in the allotment garden

There was always a laid-back air at the Tír na nÓg community gardens. Working collectively, growing fruit and vegetables organically, and sharing the produce equally, its members, youthful in the 1960s, were continuing their dreams in later years. Some evenings, blues-inflected guitar music would drift across the plots. On hot afternoons, a few folk might get together under the fruit trees with an assortment of instruments, and play songs from the Incredible String Band’s second album. It was a place of peace, harmony and not a small measure of nostalgia.

But on this day, a certain horticultural tension was in the air. In the exceptional early May weather, spears of asparagus were already poking through the rich soil of a carefully nurtured raised bed. The emergent shoots were being kept covered under a protective cage, to prevent damage from birds. Yet the gardeners knew this to be a critical moment. The crop would burst forth very quickly and would need immediate cover from sun (if too hot), from rain (should it be heavy), and from frost (for the cold mornings persisted).

Experience showed that an ingenious home-made cover, put together a few years back from upcycled materials, could solve all of these problems in one go. The trouble was, it was nowhere to be seen.

The allotmenteers mustered and set about a systematic search. It wasn’t in the community cabin – that delightful space where tools owned in common were stored and maintained. Nor was it hiding in plain sight on another raised bed – say one of those in use for garlic, carrots or early salads. So efforts to find the cover continued as everyone searched their own individual sheds – places of varying sizes, designs and colour schemes, and home to aged folding chairs, umbrellas, barbecues and other allotment essentials.

Still nothing.

Then someone remembered.

‘Henry!’

That erstwhile guru of the gardens and lover of all things sixties had died the previous winter, and was much-missed. Despite his ramshackle appearance, Henry had been the very model of allotment practice. His shed made those of TV gardeners look amateurish and messy. Always willing to loan a piece of kit, he ensured its safe return by attaching a brown parcel label to each item, stating its owner and its purpose. The shed had remained untouched since his death, a shrine to his spirit, care, and attention to detail.

The search party soon made for Henry’s plot. His shed had been left unlocked, its contents neatly stored, just as he had left them. Here they found cloches, measuring rods for spacing plants, riddles, rhubarb forcers, trugs and vast numbers of terracotta pots, carefully grouped according to size. Through and behind shelves and up in the rafters, they searched assiduously for the cover, but to no avail.

Then, just when it felt they had drawn another blank, a triumphal cry went up. An old friend of Henry had pushed his way to the back of the shed and there in the gloom something caught his eye. Squinting to read the brown parcel label, he found what they were looking for. It was of course marked with Henry’s characteristic signature. More to the point, the details on the label, when read out loud produced cries of delight and tears of joy. Capturing perfectly the aura of the gardens, they simply stated:

‘This is the awning of the cage of asparagus’.