The Grass is Greener

by Tom Fort

  ‘No.’

  ‘I said, “Listen to the accent, LUV.”’ He beamed triumphantly.

  That second meeting took place at a steam fair in Oxfordshire, where a small sample from the Hall Duck Collection was on display, together with the proprietors. Most of the machines were American – ‘to impress our Yank friends’, Andrew Hall explained. He conducted me through the distinguishing features of the 1938 Locke, with its floating cutting cylinder, and of the 6-inch Caldwell from the 1890s, and of the early 20th Century Imperial, and of the red and gold Townsend Victory. At last he was distracted by some other seeker after knowledge, and I was able to speak to Michael Duck. I asked him about their 1895 Shanks pony mower, which has featured prominently in the duo’s occasional television appearances. He responded with a well-rehearsed and detailed account of its discovery in a barn near South Molton in Devon, and subsequent rehabilitation. ‘What about this?’ I asked, pointing to a Follows and Bate 10-inch Climax.

  ‘I tell you,’ said Duck with a Wessex chuckle, ‘I bloody near ’ad a climax when I got that.’

  The ensuing narrative was complex, involving a boot sale, several rounds of negotiation in the pub, a visit to a man in the woods and the handing over of a hundred quid. A similarly tortuous chain of events preceded the acquisition of the 1855 Samuelson Budding, an exceedingly rare treasure first spotted in a pile of scrap. ‘“Fuckinell,” I zed when I zaw it,’ recounted Duck with a grin. ‘When I showed it to Andrew, ‘ee zed, “Fooking ‘ell.”’

  The man of Sheffield reappeared and started telling me how they had secured a 1912 30-inch water-cooled Ransomes from an Irishman whom they had originally contacted with a view to laying their hands on a Shanks pony mower. The story had many twists and turns before arriving at its finishing post. ‘How much did you pay for it?’ I asked.

  ‘Am I going to tell you that?’ Mr Hall demanded theatrically. ‘Not bloody likely.’

  The Hall Duck Collection is an epic tribute to the zeal and passion of two men, far superior in scale and range to anything in a museum, and all the more remarkable for the massive archive of documentation which supports it. But it is deficient in one important respect. Both Andrew Hall and Michael Duck – and, for that matter, every other lawn mower collector in the land – have a dream. It is to find, acquire, possess an original Budding. In lawn mower terms, this would be the equivalent to obtaining a violin carved and strung by Stradivari himself, a First Folio signed by Shakespeare, a copy of Bede’s History with corrections in the Venerable One’s own hand. The mystery, thus far unsolved, is whether such a thing exists at all. Ransomes, in Ipswich, have a very early machine which – according to oral tradition – was made by them to the original Budding patent. The fact that it has the secondary roller behind the cutting cylinder proves that it pre-dates a Ferrabee Budding in Stroud Museum, which has the roller in front. Another very early machine – also with the roller behind the cutters – was presented to the Science Museum in 1928 at the request of a Lady Owen McKenzie. But it, too, came from Ipswich. Of an original Budding actually made at Ferrabee’s factory at Thrupp, no trace has yet been found.

  Andrew Hall told me that he believed there was at least one such machine extant. My inquiry as to its possible whereabouts and provenance stimulated a lip-smacking, head-shaking, eye-bulging display of incredulity at my naivety. I asked Michael Duck if he thought such a thing existed. ‘Well, I met this bloke, ’ee zed how much would you pay for a Budding and I zed how much would you want and ’ee zed mebbe four or five hundred quid and I zed well, let’s see it first, then we’ll talk about money. I dunno, mebbe ‘ee ‘as got one.’ He shrugged his shoulders, eyes bright with hope.

  With all this talk of the mowers of the past, I began to feel a sharp nag of regret at the passing of our Dennis, and a feeling of dissatisfaction with my current machine. For many years, on a variety of pretty unrefined lawns, I had been content with what is a thoroughly decent, dependable, workhorse of a mower; able to chew up and spit out the thickest of rough grass, cowslips, nettles and brambles; to shrug off encounters with sticks and stones which would incapacitate more delicate machines; and yet also able to lay down a passable finish on a respectable lawn. I have never given it, my Hayter Harrier, a tithe of the care I should have, and it has repaid me with thirteen years of unstinting service, and the promise of many more to come. But, as the seeded patches of my new lawn began to show green and call for cutting, I yearned for something better. The Hayter is a rotary mower, and my fine-leaved grass cried out for something more suited to its refined ways. Only a cylinder mower would do.

  Here budgetary constraints intruded in their unpleasant way. My heart longed for a glistening new Lloyds Paladin (at around £3,500) or a valiant Dennis of yesteryear. But I had neither the surface area to justify such an outlay, nor the wherewithal to accomplish it. Then I had a stroke of good fortune. I went to see a man called Michael Hardy, a retired zoology lecturer, who – according to Andrew Hall – was a canny collector of old mowing machines. Beneath his silver hair, set in a genial face, Mr Hardy’s eyes had a softly acquisitive gleam to them. He was a haunter of junk shops and auction rooms and car boot sales, an unabashed gatherer and hoarder of the flotsam of the past. The state of his shed and his garage testified to the keenness of his enthusiasm, and the energy with which he pursued it. He collected antique secateurs, old watering cans, ancient fishing tackle and books on angling, binoculars, magnifying glasses. And then there were his mowers, stacked up on top of each other, the mound inhibited from collapse by an intricate web of rope. There was a Shanks, various Ransomes, an Atco, a crop of JPs.

  These machines, made by Jarrow and Pearson of Leicester between the 1920s and the 1960s, were Mr Hardy’s particular joy. He pulled out his Super Simplex, purred over the baffling complexities of the clutch system, the curve of the burnished aluminium petrol tank, the meanderings of the slender pipe leading from it, the extravagance of the brass fittings, the elegance of the wooden-sided grass box; then poked a couple of times at the carburettor, pulled the starter rope, and sent it away amid a plume of blue smoke.

  Later, he complained that he had an excess of mowers, and muttered something about being amenable to disposing of one or two. I had had a soft spot for the JP since coming across an old advertisement for a Super, showing it standing gracefully on a sun-drenched lawn beside a voluptuous Aphrodite under the caption ‘Masterpieces’. But it became apparent that Mr Hardy was far from weary with his JPs. He was, however, prepared to part with another small part of British mowing history – if not a masterpiece, still, in its modest way, a classic.

  Ransomes introduced their Ajax series in 1933. By 1948 the Mark Three – ‘ideal for keeping any small lawn in trim’ – was selling in its thousands. The Mark Four came in the late 1950s, its combination of ‘strength with lightness’, according to the advertisement, making it the ideal companion for a firm-breasted, laughing blonde in calf-length patterned summer dress. By 1964, though, masculinity had reasserted itself. A Brylcreemed salesman in a brown suit is inviting a solid citizen in hat and blue serge, with a pipe clamped in firm, square jaw, to part with twelve pounds fourteen shillings and sixpence to obtain the Mark Five: a ‘lightweight, quality-built and attractively styled roller mower for the well-kept lawn’. A brief turn on Michael Hardy’s grass was enough to persuade me that we – the Ajax and myself – were made for each other.

  Gleeful, I took it home, and found that the passing of forty years since its manufacture had done nothing to diminish the qualities suggested by its warrior lineage. A steady thrust set the steel cutters turning with a low, purposeful whirr and the tender, juicy cuttings flew forward. It was like a schoolmaster of the old sort, a tweed-jacketed no-nonsense sort of mower, stamping its authority firmly but fairly through its stripes. All it required was a dry place to rest, the occasional squirt of oil and wipe with a dirty rag, the periodic tightening or loosening of a nut here and there. I found it much more restful to use than the clamorous Hayter
; nor, being a push mower, did it have the annoying habit of running out of petrol when the mowing was 95 per cent done. I relished the modest physical effort it required of me, and the marvellous efficiency of its design. My Ransomes Ajax was, quite simply, a joy to use.

  My Sward and Others

  Consider the many special delights a lawn affords: soft mattress for creeping baby; worm hatchery for a robin; croquet or badminton court; baseball diamond; restful green perspectives leading the eye to a background of flower border, shrubs or hedge … as changing and spellbinding as the waves of the sea, whether flecked with sunlight under trees of light foliage, or deep, dark, solid shade, moving slowly as the tide

  KATHARINE S. WHITE

  Romantic aspiration inspired my sowing. Had I followed the dictates of dreary common sense, I would have used what the Doctor defines as Utility Lawn Grass seed, since I was treating ground next to existing areas of mediocre turf which I could not be bothered to nurse to excellence. The principal constituent of this mixture is perennial ryegrass, Lolium perenne, a plant of several sound virtues. It is properly green, grows energetically, is tolerant of drought and does not wilt away from periodic neglect. It is the stuff, as the Doctor persists in saying, for football and cricket and the pounding feet of children. But it is not the stuff of romance. Glamour and style it does not have. It is the grassy equivalent of kitchen units of pre-fabricated melamine and crushed woodchip. It is undeniably useful, but its stalkiness and the coarseness of its leaves disqualify it from the vision of the velvet sward.

  In the families of grasses, ryegrass keeps company with a variety of associates – some serviceable, some harmless, one or two downright objectionable. Chief among the last category is annual meadow grass, Poa annua, which cannot find a place in the most debased mixture sold by the seed merchant and avenges itself by blowing in uninvited on the wind and setting up home where it is not wanted. Smooth-stalked meadow grass, Poa pratensis, on the other hand, has always been and remains socially acceptable: neat in appearance, reasonably well-mannered, valued for its willingness to establish its roots in shady places. It is to be preferred to its rustic cousins, Poa trivialis and Poa nemoralis, and stands in terms of respectability beside that old favourite of Mrs Loudon and Shirley Hibberd, crested dog’s tail, Cynosurus cristatus.

  But I was like Becky Sharpe, unable to content myself with the commonplace. I craved for higher things, the Doctor’s Luxury Grade Lawn, a sweep of even, uniform turf, dense with soft but vigorous fine-leaved grasses, aglow with greenness and a quiet sense of its own high standing. Even as I craved, I knew that it could never happen, unless I dug the whole thing up, levelled it properly and started again; a labour from which I recoiled. My compromise was to introduce the higher ideals on the new patches, to establish an example of refinement in the hope of persuading the strongholds of daisies and clover and the clumps of rough meadow grass to forsake their uncultured ways.

  I inquired a little into the ways of the gentrified grasses. I found that some spread by dispatching little stems underground, which are called rhizomes, the habit of the plant being therefore defined as rhizomatous. Others creep around overground, by means of stolons, and are therefore stoloniferous. Others merely form tufts, and – if the place is suitable – more tufts. There are two great dynasties among the fine-leaved grasses, the bents (Agrostis) and the fescues (Festuca). Like all large families, they have their high achievers, their plodders and their wastrels, and it has taken a considerable expenditure of scientific effort to establish which combinations of which members are of most value to the lawnsman. Sheep’s fescue, for instance – Festuca ovina – was popular in Mrs Loudon’s day, but it has a solitary tendency, is excessively fond of forming hummocks and finds it difficult to exist in peace with other grasses. Velvet bent, Agrostis canina canina, is comely enough but handicapped by the shallowness of its roots, which causes it to flag in times of drought.

  The acknowledged champion among the Festuca family is Chewings’ Fescue; for which we have to thank a Mr Chewing, which honours the name of George Chewings, who in the 1880s acquired a property near Glenelg on the South Island of New Zealand, where a grass seed originating from England had been sown and had thrived. So hard-wearing was the grass that Chewings had the notion of selling the seed to a merchant in Invercargill, who in turn dispatched it to Sutton and Sons back in the Old Countrys. Chewings’ Fescue is both blue-blooded and a worker: non-rhizomatous, rooting intra- and extra-vaginally, dense, tufted, with a slightly bristly tubular leaf, commendably drought-resistant, tolerant of most soils, and – most important – a good team player, able to get on with other grasses. If it has a weakness, it lies in its placid nature. It can get crowded out by other, more aggressive grasses.

  Its favoured partner among the members of the Agrostis dynasty was also first developed in New Zealand. Browntop bent was exported from the Waipu district, whence – according to those who have delved into the by-ways of grass history – it had been brought from Prince Edward Island in the 1850s. It is both rhizomatous and slightly stoloniferous, tough but classy, easy-going, another good team player. It does, however, take time to establish itself; while, concealed in its genetic constitution, is a proclivity to dominate. It is therefore normally restricted to no more than a fifth of the mixture. It is nursed by the quicker-growing fescue, and then, as time goes on, it tends to take over.

  After the tedious labour of weed and stone removal, raking, stamping and the rest of it, the sowing of the seed came as a welcome diversion. Not that the Doctor would have it so. His recommended programme of action demands the raking of furrows, the division of the seed into four equal parts to be distributed in four directions, more raking, and the arrangement of a tapestry of criss-crossed black thread above the seed bed to discourage the birds from eating the stuff. But by now I found myself becoming a touch rebellious under the weight of the orthodoxy. I ran my fingers through the mixture of fine fescues and browntop. It was dry and rustled pleasantly. Then I cast it upon the ground wherever my steps took me, until the brown of the earth was nicely flecked by the pale needles, and the box was empty. I sieved a smattering of soil and compost on to the seed, firmed it down, and left it.

  I had actually done the front lawn some time before, and had realized after a while – during which nothing happened – that I had jumped the gun, and that the soil had not warmed sufficiently to quicken my seed into life. By the time I resumed operations, summer had tiptoed in. There were soft breezes from the south, occasional periods of benign sunshine, and a good deal of the best sort of rain – not pounding downpours, but soft and drenching.

  Germination is a wondrous thing. There comes a morning when you are, as you do most mornings, staring forth from an upstairs window at your bare patches, reflecting, as you invariably do, on the baffling way in which the stones which you have removed by the barrowful are replaced from mysterious sources by other stones, when you realize that the patch is not bare at all, that it has been brushed with colour, as if a green mist were clinging to it. You hurtle forth, and there, magically appeared among the stones, are the first little drifts of the risen grass, blades cobweb thin, hardly strong enough to be looked at, let alone touched.

  Yet they are amazingly energetic in their growth, these tiny pins of green. Each day the tinge strengthens, suggestion becomes reality. It is still a fragile thing, but it has declared itself as here to stay. You may now tread upon it carefully, stoop to pluck out the nasty sprigs of weed which have shot up in competition, perhaps even venture a light roll with the mower tilted back, to encourage rhizomes and stolons to do their stuff. Hovering in your mind is the thought of the first mow, the coming of age.

  Those moments have something of the unalloyed joy and excitement of attending the birth of a child; and, like childbirth, are followed by much tedious care. Would that making and having a lawn were merely a matter of watching the grass grow, and then marching up and down on it in the sunshine making neat patterns on it, and laying the har
vest on the compost heap. The matter of weeds spoils all that.

  I know that there cannot be gardening without weeds. They are like midges, motorway cones and jar tops which cannot be unscrewed – pinpricks of nuisance which the mature person learns to manage with a smile and a shrug of resignation. Nor am I a racial purist where my lawn is concerned. I am prepared to put up with daisies and clover in moderation, would not wish to exterminate pearlwort, will turn a blind eye to a minor sprouting of mouse-ear. But there are some invaders whose habits put them beyond the pale. I will not stand aside and permit the odious ribwort and other plantains to have their way. Nourished by their deep, pale taproots, they spread their fat, fleshy leaves along the surface and, if left to their own horrible devices, send forth their flower heads atop ridiculous waving stalks, seeking to cast their spawn on the wind and extend their territory. The notion of team play, live and let live, is abhorrent to them. Their sole instinct is conquest.

  Those conditions of warmth and damp which had helped the infant grass on its way were equally delightful to the plantains. While my attention was occupied elsewhere, they multiplied. If I had been on top of the situation, I should have resorted at once to chemical attack and sprayed them with some disabling poison. That is what the Doctor would have done. But I had vague inclinations towards the organic floating in my head, the thought that perhaps there might be a third way, between excessive permissiveness and Stalinist oppression. By the time I became fully aware of the menace, it was too late for liberal compromise. Armed with hand fork, a narrow trowel, a chisel and a screwdriver, I waged war on my knees, prizing out my enemies one by one. I removed five large bucketfuls of casualties, until my fingers were stained tobacco yellow with their bitter juices, the lawn was defaced with spots of bare earth and my heart was filled with detestation for these useless creations.