Day 103 - A big squash

The scope of what I was able to initiate in the orchard and dried flower garden was limited. They already had their defined purpose, and it would have been wrong to try and change that. All I could do was try to improve morale by keeping the warring factions apart and stimulate the enthusiasm for the basic horticultural tasks the place needed. That was easy. Beyond that, I took charge of the climbers in line with my personal enthusiasm, and tried to do something about improving the incorporation of our horticultural endeavours into the scope of the retail department. By doing so, I hoped to create a non-hostile link between the indoors and the outdoors. At the moment the dried flower sales had been pushed to the far end of the shop where customers seldom went, in favour of displaying biscuits, smelly things and tea towels. Now I am prepared to accept that these were probably the best sellers, but as the only dedicated dried flower garden in the country, I felt we had an obligation to showcase our wares. Linked in to all of this was my desire to put our vegetable and fruit sales on to a proper retail footing amongst other things.

During the winter, with the help of my new team, I took the risk of making myself permanently unpopular with the retail people, by rearranging the far end of the shop, which was actually in a separate room from the main shop at the front. We brought dried flowers out of the shadows into the foreground, and let customers really see what we had to offer, including completed arrangements created by volunteers, and individual components on sale for people who wanted to make their own. We also made arrangements to order, and did a few to furnish the late Tam Dalyell's House of the Binns -

These were nice exuberant displays, but very traditional, and I began to put out feelers to see if there was anybody who would like to join us to experiment with a more avant-garde style, or try something influenced by Japanese Ikebana perhaps. Anything to get us away from the fossilised Victorian house atmosphere most people think of when they imagine dried flowers. We didn't find anybody, and I'm not sure they have yet. If you have that kind of creative imagination, I'm sure there's a vacancy still. Unpaid of course!

Anyway, I lived to see the dried flowers assume more prominence in the ethos of the place, which was only fitting, as it was what the organisation had been given, and was what constituted the unique character of the property. That and its orchard of historic fruit varieties. These came into their own in October.

I did initiate one other novelty that first winter, bringing with me some of the skills I had learned in my previous job. Although I hadn't involved myself in making Christmas wreaths there, but had concentrated on all important admin work, I had observed the two gardeners making wreaths in the traditional style. In that job this task had kept them out of the bad weather and brought us a few pounds to spend on plants, but frankly was hardly worth the effort, except in keeping a tradition alive. In this job it was different, and seemed to fit in well with our other work producing displays of dried material for resale. Accordingly, I bought the necessary bits and bobs, and set about showing the staff and volunteers, including my partner (not yet my wife) how to go about it. I was pretty pleased with the results and a brisk trade was had at £16-50 each -

We made a number of different styles, so I will follow this with a few uncaptioned pictures to give an idea of the range of options on offer -

Then, as soon as produce was ready from the other garden in early summer, we started bagging it up and selling it from a trolley in the shade outside the shop. That was very successful and made good use of what we were growing right through until the Apple Day in October. This was an annual event, fairly well attended, and we had dozens of baskets of all varieties of the fruit we grew, giving people the chance to taste apples they had never even heard of. I also incorporated some vegetable sales and games into this, and in fact I met my future best man over a 'Guess the Weight of the Pumpkin' competition.