In 1984, the year after our first daughter was born, a friend in the Planning Department at Dyfed County Council asked me if I’d like a temporary, part-time job as a Warden at the Council’s Gelli Aur (‘Golden Grove’) Country Park near Llandeilo.
I didn’t know the area but the work sounded interesting and it would fit in well with child-care involving my parents (doting grandparents) and my husband. Arriving for work on the first day I instantly fell in love with the whole place.
For the first year that I worked at the Park, there were no facilities for visitors, except toilets near the carpark, and most people like a cuppa with their countryside rambles! So, over the next few years, an enormous conservatory was built beside the car park, housing a café and information centre, with a decking terrace adjoining it which overlooked a newly-enclosed Deer Park and the spectacular views across the valley.
In fine weather this viewing-point was very popular, often allowing visitors to get better views of the deer and frequently having close encounters with our freely-roaming peacocks. We wardens, however, didn’t have such salubrious accommodation; our ‘office’ was a portacabin where paper work was done, coffee or tea made, some small tools stored – and mud from boots was wall-to-wall. It had a particular smell all of its own, not unpleasant, just ‘different’ and I grew very fond of it. I have many happy memories of my Wardening days; some are fairly vague now, but the following are just two which stand out:-
Most guided groups were booked in advance, giving whichever Warden who was on duty time to prepare. However, occasionally a passing coach-trip saw the sign for the Park and popped in unannounced, which was the case one day when I hadn’t been working there for long. A very large coach drew up in the car park near our hut and a stream of visitors disembarked. Assuming they’d go for a wander around unescorted as usual, picking up Nature Trail leaflets and so on from the café, I continued with my work but the next thing I knew was that the coach driver was heading for our hut.
“I’ve got a coach-load of Swedes”, he declared, “Could you give them a short guided-tour of the grounds and stuff, please? They speak very good English”.
Resisting the temptation to make a bad, vegetable-based joke, I tried to look confident. However, not yet having memorised all the facts about the trees of the Arboretum and the history of the house, I was really taken aback – I wanted to appear professional and knowledgeable, instead of which I could end up as a stammering clot.
There was nothing for it but to go round clutching the sheaf of notes that I’d been given which described the trees and the house history.
I put on my most welcoming smile as I greeted the group and, ‘honesty being the best policy’, decided to admit to my situation. I needn’t have worried, the Swedish visitors couldn’t have been more understanding and, in impeccable English, apologised for arriving unannounced, adding that they’d be delighted to see whatever I could find for them.
So we set off, me waving my notes around and consulting them frequently, like an emergency understudy in an am-dram play and, as was often the case, a couple of visitors in the group were particularly interactive with me, showing genuine interest in their surroundings and in certain details.
One lady got very excited when we reached ‘the Handkerchief Tree’ which, being very distinctive, I already knew something about, and was able to discuss its appearance with her; she was sure they had some of the same species in a park in Stokholm, and enthusiastically described them to me. Finally, having explored the Arboretum thoroughly and walked around the outside of the house, the tour ended and the coach-party left, thanking me profusely for their tour.
A few weeks later I went into work and found a note left on the desk from our other Warden, with a postcard attached.
The note read: ‘Hi Carolyn, this card came the other day – since I’ve never shown a Swedish coach party around and I'm definitely not ‘The Lady Warden’, I assume it’s for you!’
The card was indeed addressed to ‘The Lady Warden, Golden Grove Country Park, Llandeilo, Wales’ and next to the address was a simple message: ‘Yes, we do have these trees in our Park in Stokholm. Thank you for your wonderful talk’, and on the front was a beautiful picture of a Handkerchief Tree. I was incredibly touched that this particular lady had gone to all the trouble of remembering me and finding the appropriate postcard. I pinned the card on the wall of our hut, to share my appreciation of her gesture, but now I slightly regret not keeping it, to remind me of one of Life’s small, but tremendously kind, acts.
What wasn’t unusual was to get coach outings of various W.I. groups and similar parties, whose members were particularly keen on seeing the gardens, grounds (and house, if it was open).
It may be very tempting to tweak the top off a herb here, or snaffle a quick flower-cutting there (my own Grandmother was particularly guilty of this, with surprisingly impressive flowering results afterwards) and these unobtrusive snippets usually went unnoticed, but one particular bit of poaching probably had some unforeseen and disastrous consequences for one lady.
We had a small field near the car park which had become inundated with Himalayan Balsam – a pretty pink plant which bees love, but which is unstoppably choking local riverbanks and hedges.
Knowing how disastrously it would spread, and despite huge environmental misgivings all round, the decision was made to eradicate it by spraying, and so it duly disappeared.
Later that Summer a lady came up to me and enquired where “all the pretty pink flowers” had gone from the meadow? Before I could give her a truthful but diplomatic reply, she continued,
“I thought that they were so pretty that I actually pulled some up and took them and a few seeds home with me”. She giggled conspiratorially, but went on, “I know that I shouldn’t have, but yours have all gone now, and mine are doing so well in my garden – they’re even spreading!”
She looked so pleased with the results of her minor theft that I simply smiled weakly, muttering “Oh good”, without the heart to tell her that she’d probably have no garden left within a year or two, except for a great expanse of Himalayan Balsam. I suppose the moral of that story is “Be wary of what you pinch from other gardens – they might turn out to be Triffids!”
I worked at Gelli Aur eight times over a period of eight years and I loved every minute of it. Both our daughters visited over these years, starting with a little toddler happily re-arranging the gravel paths around the Herb Garden, to a pair of seven and nine year-olds, confidently chatting to visitors, or, when the visitors had gone, riding their bikes around the carpark or rolling down the stepped lawns.
One of my own abiding memories was of doing the evening rounds of the Arboretum – the public all gone home – picking up any litter (of which there was hardly ever any) and really just drinking in the beauty and tranquillity of the place.
Sometimes I re-visited the quaint little wooden folly with its ornately patterned, wooden-collaged ceiling, hidden down a passageway of bizarrely-shaped lumps of limestone which sprouted some equally odd types of ferns, known to the Victorians as ‘sports’.
Afterwards, coming to the opposite end of the secluded area of trees and shrubs, beyond the stepped lawns below, the views across the valley to the ruins of Dinefwr Castle and the gorgeous hills surrounding it never failed to enchant me.
At times like this, alone with the trees, birds and perhaps a few deer in the shadows, I felt as if I owned the place and had to mentally pinch myself to remember that I was actually getting paid to do the work.
Finally, as I slowly drove home along the drive in approaching dusk, I was often stopped by a line of Fallow deer, taking no notice of me, unhurriedly crossing the driveway and melting into the shadows of the trees opposite – a beautiful end to a perfect day.
Carolyn Hunt
What a wonderful read, thank you for sharing Carolyn.