Poppy's Garden (2 page)

“No. But it would be good to have a house too,” Izzy agreed, writing another note. “They like piles of rotting logs to sleep in, and compost heaps. And lots of slugs to eat. Dad reckons there’s loads more slugs than there used to be, because there aren’t as many hedgehogs to eat them.” She looked up at Maya. “The hole’s really just a hole. In the fence. They explained it in the email. It’s no good having a nice wild flower patch, and the rotting logs and
everything, if your garden fence is so big and solid that the hedgehogs can’t get in and find them! Everyone has fences and walls now, and there are a lot fewer grassy patches, which used to be like hedgehog roads. They don’t like streets, or patios, and I suppose if they have to go on roads they get squashed by cars.” Izzy sighed sadly. “I haven’t seen a hedgehog for ages, except squashed ones. So the email said to please ask your parents to cut a little hedgehog-sized hole in your fence.” Then she laughed. “I asked Dad and he said we didn’t need to, the fence is full of holes anyway. He’s always out doing other people’s gardens; he doesn’t get time to do ours.”

“I wish it didn’t have to be one entry for each person,” Poppy said, looking enviously at Izzy’s notes. “You know so much about all this stuff. I could draw it, and you could have the ideas.”

“Wild flowers was your idea,” Izzy reminded her. “And I haven’t a clue about what I want my design to look like. I might not even enter – except I probably ought to, just to keep Dad happy.”

“Only a week till we have to give them in,” Poppy said thoughtfully. “I wonder if Mr Finlay will let us do the designing instead of homework?”

“I wouldn’t bet on it,” Emily sighed, and the others laughed.

Izzy looked at the entry form that Mr Finlay had handed round. The space for the garden was quite big, but it was a funny shape. Long and thin, and running round a corner as well, so it was almost L-shaped. It wasn’t like starting with a nice simple square. Although – maybe that was a good thing. She’d have to be a bit clever, to make the most of the shape… There would be lots of walls, too, so she could add in murals, now that Maya had reminded her about the one in the canal tunnel. That had been really fun. Maybe she could do this, after all…

TWO

Poppy sat curled up on her bed with her drawing pad resting on her knees. She’d been working on different designs for ages, but she hadn’t come up with anything she really liked yet. She’d done some really gorgeous drawings for her first idea, which was based on the canal boat that she and the others had ridden on at the end of their big canal clean-up weekend. She’d thought that they could build half a canal boat sticking out of the school wall, and use it for sitting on, with loads of pots and tubs for flowers. But that didn’t really solve the problem of the weird L-shaped plot, and it was more about the building than the plants, which she guessed wouldn’t be what the judges were looking for.

Poppy flicked through her drawings, frowning a little. It was nice that the design showed the school was quite close to the canal though. Mr Finlay had
told them all about it – how the canals were used like roads, for carrying stuff from place to place on the boats. They’d had to do one of his projects on it, plotting the course of a family living on their canal boat. It had definitely been one of their teacher’s favourite projects – history and maps together were like his dream come true.

So what else was their area known for, apart from the canal? Poppy frowned. She actually couldn’t think of
anything
. Millford was about the most averagely boring town ever. She sighed and turned back to a fresh page. Maybe she should try that grand princessy design she remembered from when she was little? All those roses? A Sleeping Beauty garden! Poppy smiled to herself and started to draw. They could paint the side wall of the school so that it looked like a palace; that would be no problem. And then they’d plant lots of climbing roses. Maybe some ivy – that climbed too, didn’t it? Would the budget run to a fountain, even if it didn’t have pink lemonade? And… and… Poppy sighed, even more heavily than before.

It was another pretty picture, but it wasn’t really a garden design. The only plants she’d put in it were loads of roses and some ivy, if ivy was even the plant she thought it was. No one was going to think much
of that. Especially as all the roses would probably flower at the same time, and then there wouldn’t be anything else in her garden. And she couldn’t see the boys being very keen on it either. The school wasn’t going to choose a design that only girls would like.

Poppy frowned to herself. That was another thing – she needed to make sure someone in a wheelchair could get round the garden properly as well. There wasn’t anyone at Park Road with a wheelchair at the moment, but there was a little boy in Reception with a walking frame. He’d probably have trouble getting it across grass, or gravel. Poppy made a note in the corner of her drawing and ran her fingers through her hair wearily. She hadn’t expected garden designing to be this difficult. There was so much to remember.

Poppy dumped her sketch book on the floor and reached for the essential oils kit on top of her chest of drawers. She needed something to cheer her up and help her concentrate. The oils and their lovely wooden case had been her birthday present from Mum and Dad, and she loved experimenting with them, making special mixtures to solve different problems. Mum said it was one of the best presents she’d ever given anyone, because it meant that Poppy always wanted to massage her shoulders with scented
oils. Except that Poppy wished her mum would have something more interesting wrong with her than just being a bit tired, or having had a long day at work. Her mum was a doctor’s receptionist, and people quite often shouted at her because they were upset or stressed. Poppy had used up a lot of her jasmine oil on shoulder massages for Mum; it was great for making people feel loved and looked after.

Actually, she could use jasmine now, maybe with a bit of rose. They’d make her feel better, and they were really good for confidence. She might stop feeling so useless at garden design. Poppy picked up the bottles and frowned. It was all very well feeling more confident, but what if they didn’t actually make her designs any better? Reluctantly, she put the rose and jasmine back, and picked up the little book that Mum and Dad had given her to go with the oils. She had a feeling that peppermint was supposed to be good when you needed to concentrate. She flicked through the pages. Yes, definitely peppermint. With basil, maybe. Poppy turned over to the basil page and giggled. Yes, she definitely needed enthusiasm, and some help overcoming her doubts.

She dripped the oils into one of the little clay dishes, counting out the drops slowly, with some almond
oil as a base. Then she very carefully lit the tealight under her oil burner. Mum hadn’t let her have the kit until her tenth birthday, even though Poppy had wanted it for ages before, because she wasn’t really happy about Poppy having candles in her room. Alex and Jake’s birthday present to her had been a table, a little one from IKEA that was not allowed to have anything on it at all apart from the oil burner, so that there was no chance Poppy could set fire to anything by accident.

Poppy carefully lit the tiny candle, and sighed as she realised that her mum had been at the matches again. Her mum worried about the burner so much that she kept raiding the matchbox, so that Poppy never had more than about three matches, just in case…

Mmmmm… Peppermint and basil was nice. Herby and fresh. Maybe she should do this when there was going to be a spelling test. Or before SATs, next year. Poppy took a deep breath and waited to feel enthusiastic and focused. It would probably take a little while though. She flicked through the essential oils guide, wondering if there were any other combinations she could try. She needed one for brilliant ideas…

Poppy had been going through the book backwards, and now she was back at the introduction. She was about to close the book when she noticed a tiny illustration, buried in the text of the introduction.
A medieval herb garden
, the caption said.

It was beautiful. Like an amazing pattern, all made out of plants. It almost looked like a maze, with the little hedges, but Poppy had a feeling they were too low to hide anyone. They were just there to keep the different sorts of plants separate. But the picture was so little it was hard to tell. She needed a better one, but she was pretty sure there was nothing like that in any of her other books.

Mum liked gardening, though. There was a shelf in the kitchen with recipe books and a few gardening books, and Poppy was sure that one of them was about growing your own fruit and vegetables, and herbs came into it too. She’d seen Mum looking at it when she’d bought a basil plant from the supermarket, trying to work out if there was a way to keep it alive.

Poppy bounced off her bed, pausing for a second to blow out the tealight under the oil burner, because if anyone found out she’d left it burning she’d never be allowed to use it again. Then she raced down the
stairs. Their house was quite old and tall and there were a lot of stairs up to her room, which had been an attic once. Mum yelled at her for going too fast, but Poppy loved the feeling of swinging round the banisters.

“Where’s the fire?” her mother muttered, looking up from some letters. Billy was flaked out beneath her chair, and Poppy could see that her mum was resting her feet on him – he didn’t mind. Then her mum’s eyes sharpened. “You haven’t set anything on fire, have you? I can smell something funny…”

“It’s mint and basil, Mum. It’s helping me concentrate, and I blew the candle out before I came down.” Poppy rolled her eyes. “Please can I borrow your gardening book? The fruit and vegetable one? It’s for school – there’s a competition to design a school garden. If we win, we get a TV programme made about us!”

“And you want to grow vegetables?” her mum asked, sounding a bit doubtful as she handed over the book from the shelf by the fridge.

Poppy shook her head. “Not really. I want to read the herbs bit. I found a picture of a medieval herb garden, and I thought I could do an updated one… Oooh, Mum! This book’s by Cam Morris! He’s the
person in charge of the competition. I definitely need to look at this, then I can find out what sort of gardens he likes! Can I take it upstairs?”

Her mum nodded. “Sure. Show me the design when you’ve done it, won’t you, Poppy? I’d really like to see it.”

Poppy grinned at her. “It doesn’t mean I’m going to be any more into gardening, Mum. I don’t want to go and deadhead the roses, or whatever it is you were going to ask.”

“Oh, well. It would just be nice if one of you liked gardening.” Her mother sighed. “Alex and Jake only go in the garden to play football, or if I blackmail one of them into cutting the grass.”

“I like picking the flowers for making things,” Poppy reminded her. “Lavender and rose petals and things. I’ll look after the book, Mum. Thanks!”

She went slowly back upstairs, leafing through the book. It was full of gorgeous pictures of flowers, and just as she reached her bedroom, she gave a satisfied sigh. There it was. The kitchen garden from a chateau in France, laid out in the same sort of way as the little picture in her essential oils book.

Poppy smiled at the map as she went to sit down on her bed. Somehow it reminded her of her mum’s
new kitchen tiles. The fancy blue patterned ones she’d had put along the back of the sink. It was the same sort of geometric pattern. Poppy flicked over the page, and there was a photo of part of the garden. Tiny, delicate little hedges, so straight and perfect. It looked like they must trim them with nail scissors and a ruler, she thought. There was a rose bush in the middle of the square, and oddly familiar round green things were planted in between the lines of hedge. Poppy frowned at them, until she realised they were cabbages. Cabbages and roses! She giggled.

She scanned the text by the pictures. It made sense, all the little stone paths, winding in and out of the beds. It meant you could get at the fruit and vegetables easily to harvest them. And the nicest gardens were often in monasteries, where the monks had time to work on looking after the plants carefully, and they only had quite small spaces, so everything had to be planted up close.

Just like the school garden. And it would be easy to make it accessible for wheelchairs, because of the little paths – in fact, some of the beds could be raised up perhaps, so people didn’t have to lean down. Poppy twirled her hair round her fingers thoughtfully. She needed to put the green and blue streaks back in,
she noticed – they were growing out. She had to be a bit careful with them, because they weren’t supposed to have dyed hair at school. But she had really thick, wavy hair, and she only dyed the underneath bits, so she got away with it as long as she was careful tying her hair back for PE.

The monks would have herb gardens too, she read, because the only hospitals at that time were the ones in the monasteries. Poppy blinked. She loved using alternative remedies, but her mum did give her Calpol if she was feeling really awful. It might be a bit scary to have
nothing
but herbs…

Poppy looked at the entry sheet for the school garden and carefully copied the diagram of the real garden space into her sketch book. For a garden like one of those medieval ones, she’d need to be really careful about fitting it into the space – no artistic guessing. Once she’d drawn it out, she chewed the end of her pencil, looking at the space. How was she going to split it up? The monks had sections for different herbs in the hospital gardens, and different kinds of fruit and vegetables in their kitchen gardens. And the beautiful chateau garden seemed to have everything. Vines, even.

Plants that smell nice, she scribbled along the
bottom of the page, thinking of the roses again. And of the way the lavender in their garden smelled so lovely when she brushed past it while she was throwing a ball for Billy. Or when she accidentally threw the ball
into
it, and Billy crashed into the middle of the lavender bush to get it out…

Smell… A scented garden would be lovely. All sorts of different smells. But was that enough? Maybe it ought to be all the senses, Poppy thought, scribbling frantically. Plants with furry leaves. And prickles to stop stupid boys picking them. And they could have herbs that tasted nice too! Mint. That would be good. All the teachers could chew it so they got rid of their disgusting coffee breath after spending break in the staff room. Sight was easy – it would just be hard choosing the most beautiful flowers. But sound? Plants with rattly leaves, somehow? Ferns that rustled when the wind blew through them? Poppy looked doubtfully at her notes. Maybe they could cheat a bit and put some wind chimes in…