Tropical plants have adjusted to new environments. They live in conditions not familiar to their origin but have learnt how to survive alongside native spices.
Paulette
My mother has a garden party every year to raise money for St Kitts and Nevis Association.
Her garden is beautiful; full of red, pink, yellow and white roses and the biggest hydrangeas I’ve ever seen.
A beautiful garden just right for a garden party.
Mum’s cooking up rice and peas, fish, chicken, curry goat veg option, mac cheese and cakes – calypso/reggae beautifully disturbing the peace.
Mum’s garden is open to all. I asked her about her garden back home. She said “No time for pretty gardens. Pretty gardens reserved for the land owners”. No land was given to the people. Sugar cane and cotton ruled the land.
My great grandmother was a weeder in the sugar cane and cotton fields of St Kitts. Up at 5am dressed in denim to protect soft flesh armed with a hoe, like generations before her. They were bound to the Earth. Uprooted, re-named and re-imagined in an English setting.
Tropical plants have adjusted to new environments. They live in conditions not familiar to their origin but have learnt how to survive alongside native spices.
We sit sipping tea looking out into a beautiful mature garden and I ask for more stories of past lives in distant places.
She owns her piece of England now.