Gardens and Yards...
Gardening came to me, unexpected and unbidden, floating in slightly on the gently warming breeze of an American Mid-Western spring. I had always loved gardens in some way or another as, I suspect, nearly all the British do somewhere deep down. Back home, this is evident all over the country, in any possible place you can think to look. Yes, there are stately homes with formal grounds and allotments and back gardens galore but even in the depths of the sprawling urban masses of cities like London or Manchester, we are surrounded by ordinary people’s attempts to bring some greenery into the landscape. A truism that is oft quoted is that “an Englishman’s home is his castle” and that there is something in the way that an Englishman (or woman for that matter) treats their domicile that is wholly unique. I say, wholly unique, for I fancy that it is an observation that doesn’t just count for Englishmen, but all who hail from the British Isles, in some small way. Our homes are fortresses, bas
