The Ingwersen ’s Birch Farm greenhouse staff 1979 . David Watling is third from left . Allen Bush is 5th from right .
I ’m not much of a pack git , but I have saved previous letters from the past thirty - five years .
Gardeners , who it seems seldom had a tiresome day , dominate the files . Among them are letters from Christopher Lloyd and Elizabeth Lawrence , but I peculiarly enjoyed rereading my letters from David Watling . This is not a name that would pop - up on anyone ’s list of handsome - name gardener , but he was a tremendous influence along my garden course , as much as Lloyd and Lawrence .
The Ingwersen’s Birch Farm nursery staff 1979. David Watling is 3rd from left. Allen Bush is 5th from right.
I had n’t believe about David Watling for a while until I heard from my friend Janet Chubb that he had expire this past summertime , aged 77 . He was swallow in the St Botolph ’s Church cemetery in Limpenhoe , Norfolk . My last missive from David was in 1999 . I had n’t regard him since I fall from England to the United States , in 1979 .
I worked for David at Ingwersen ’s Birch Farm Nursery in the summer of 1979 . I had spent the previous nine months as an International Trainee at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew , where I ’d become smitten with alpines . ( I met Janet Chubb at Kew , and she by and by work at Ingwersen ’s . ) I had dreams of opening a greenhouse but needed more propagation experience . The Ingwersens — Will and his half - brother , Paul — welcomed me .
Birch Farm Nursery was keep its 50thanniversary in 1979 , and I made chronicle . I was their first American hire and the nursery ’s only colonial amusement . I was paid a meager £ 20 per calendar week and was place out each 24-hour interval to Mary Jane , Mary Jane - up plant , and occasionally to hold off on customers . Lady Amherst of Hackney , a keen gardener , once looked at me , with an odd expression , and told me , with her posh accent , that I had , “ the most peculiar Sussex accent I have ever heard . ” To which I respond courteously , “ Thank you , ma’am . ”
It was a wonderful summer .
Perhaps full of all , David Watling , the nursery coach and a lover of erstwhile American Studebakers , was my boss . Because of his fondness for those car , David must have compute that Americans ca n’t be all uncollectible .
At time curmudgeonly , and other times angelic , he was smart , affable — when he want to be — and a o.k. plantsman . He taught me how to pay care and how to stick cuttings . During one use , Rosa ‘ Pom Pom de Paris , ’ the miniature , thorny spring up rip up my hands . ( I would n’t have dared ask beforehand for a pair of gloves . )
I was allow for to wonder whether I was up to the task or too dim to know the difference . The twinkle in his eye was an unexpected giveaway . I recognise , unequivocally , that I was being give the go - ahead . possibly someday I could be a disseminator and a gardener like David Watling .
David left Ingwersen ’s to work at a nursery in Northhampton and retired to the village of Limpenhoe in his native Norfolk . He moved the little cedarwood greenhouse , and all of the rare cacti , one last fourth dimension . It had take after him wherever he go .
By all estimates , he was a private adult male , but the twenty years of letters formed a reform-minded conversation . David would keep me up to particular date on my Paraguay tea from the greenhouse — Ray , Old Mike , David Mac , David Williams , Lynton , Sue and Martin .
I do n’t get many missive any longer . Aunt Betsy sends a Christmas letter . My girl prefer to text . My son can hardly write in longhand ; cursive was an afterthought in elementary schoolhouse .
My protected letter are often written with singular calligraphy but some are scarcely clear . They are full of meaningful moments , gleaned from the passage of months or years gone by . societal medium , on the other deal , is the high - tech interpretation of sitting around the potbelly stove all day , every day at the nation store . Maybe more like sitting around potbelly stoves at 800 nation stores . You do n’t miss much . But there ’s not much to pretermit .
