2:59pm Thursday 12th April 2007
By Joolz Denby
Bradford’s a strange place; full of nooks and crannies, ginnels and corners where time and modernity swirl past like eddies in a fast-flowing river leaving precious and magical pockets of
oddity untouched.
The garden was like that, though it was in plain sight, bang next to a busy road and opposite the University Sports Centre. I imagine some people passed it every day; a few of them may have
consciously noted it, many would simply have felt it unconsciously soothing the corners of their raggled minds.
It was an old garden. The house it belonged to is a run-down but still respectable semi, built in the 40s or 50’s, made of brick and peeling stucco. A low wall enclosed the garden which was
bigger than its neighbours, due to it being on the end of the row.
At one time, the gardener had planted vegetables - and alongside the tangled fall of old white roses that clasped a stunted lilac in a spiky hug and the irises, daffs and primroses that nosed out in
their season from the black city earth - leeks, potatoes and that great Northern passion, rhubarb flourished unchecked with fluted parasol leaves shading luminous pink-patinated stalks more luscious
than a houri's lips. Wreaths of convolvulus garlanded the Love-Lies-Bleeding that rose in drooping arcs from wild mists of Nigella and forget-me-not. I think I saw bluebells, but that may have been a
waking dream.
In winter, the garden’s bare bones glittered with frosted spider’s webs and iced snail shells; mice nested in an old tin watering can that was welded to the ground by grass and the dark,
dormant spires of mock orange blossom made a melancholic Gothic tangle hallowed as any cathedral.
The garden was a tiny rectangle of pure country; a miniature patchwork of self-seeded, untidy, un-urban, anti-minimalist, non-designer glory. It was a poem. It was like a draught of sun-yellow
cowslip wine, heady, chaotic and uplifting. It was as sweet as an old apple and a joy.
Yesterday I saw it had been razed to the bare earth and utterly destroyed. A workman told me a fast-food outlet will be built there.
This is the garden’s only memorial.
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