On the other hand, poor though the visitor response had been, the previous year had shown the highest numbers so far, albeit peaking at only around eighteen and a half thousand. This was partly because of the very restricted opening hours for the house, based on the terms of private occupancy, and partly because the garden was a disappointment, particularly as viewed by members of the organisation who were accustomed to seeing better. There was no shortage of complaints.
So although I have shown myself to have been busy in my first months setting in motion a number of urgent horticultural improvements to address these issues, I also had a commitment to organising the opening arrangements to make the property more efficient and more attractive to visitors. In this I had absolutely no experience at all. Not a clue. The longed-for failure had arrived in gardener's overalls and safety boots, and was about to prove the pessimistic contingent at Head Office right.
Except I got lucky by applying common sense to the challenge. I decided that what visitors needed was a welcome, the provision of information, and friendly, communicative service. Those were the basics as I saw them. Some of the ways of achieving them I learned by observing our helpers at work after the season started. Some I set about implementing immediately.
But before that even, I met another of our behind-the-scenes volunteers, who got involved once a year in the closed season. She stood at the front door one day, looking out at the garden and apparently remarked, 'who is that handsome man?' Turns out she was referring to me. Probably her distance vision wasn't too good, but that wasn't the facility she required for what she did for us. She had been responsible for compiling the inventory of all the contents of the house so we knew what we had. Her close-up vision was faultless, and she had indelibly numbered everything in unobtrusive places. She was here to help me check the inventory, to ensure that everything was still there and in good condition, a necessary annual check when your house is being lived in by outsiders. I don't have a background in furniture, paintings, porcelain, metalwork, stoneware, objects de vertu in general. I'm not stupid either, but I needed help with this. I learned a huge amount from working alongside her every winter for the rest of my time there, and broadened the scope of my knowledge and sensitivity considerably. She came to visit me here at home some 25 years later, and was chauffered by her bridge partner, who, it transpired, was the very same man who had been my first boss in Scotland. He too had also finally landed south of the border. A happy coincidence which allowed me to rekindle that relationship that I thought was gone forever.
Through working with this volunteer, I became aware of the huge responsibility of caring for so many irreplaceable items of high value, and of the fact that I was going to have to reach deep within myself to grow to fill my new role.
However, I also began to sense that my absence from the garden was perhaps viewed by the team as skiving, or at least a sign that by combining the two roles into one, the organisation had contrived to ensure that neither one would be done properly. Or that may just have been paranoia on my part. Whichever it was, it set within me a tendency to work twice as hard to prove them all wrong.
I was, after all, the custodian of a house containing a beautiful perfume burner and pair of gryphons by Matthew Boulton, and at the same time in charge of potentially one of the finest twentieth-century gardens in the country. I just needed to prove I was worthy.
No comments:
Post a Comment