Mr Richardson

  Mr. Richardson, gardener. Patrick Roper, 6 December 2012 Mr. Richardson was our part-time gardener when we lived at the Green Walk in Chingford, north London in the 1940s.  He used to come round a couple of times a week for an afternoon’s jobbing work.  As a small boy I would often ‘help’ him with his rather set routine.  He would cut the large back lawn with a huge push mower that purred over the grass leaving it beautifully striped with silvery and darker green.  He would weed the herbaceous borders with their helianthemums and Michaelmas daisies and the vegetable patch towards the end of the garden.  He had a compost heap and a shed down there too, the latter filled with all sorts of intriguing objects like trowels, trugs, spades, sieves, forks, rakes, hoes and long, buff horsetails of bast.  This was raffia bast, used for tying plants and binding taller stems.  There were also boxes and drawers of assorted nails and screws and a strong smell...