Page 47 of The Garden of Forgotten Wishes
‘And all kinds of Grace Garden tat, like rulers and rubbers and mugs and stuff,’ said Ned. ‘I thought we’d start out small and see what sells. And I’ve only just realized we’re opening aweektoday!’
‘That’s plenty of time for everything youneedto do,’ said Elf calmly, arriving just in time to hear this despairing exclamation. ‘Once I’ve shown you how the till works, a couple of hours of setting up the shop and price ticketing the stock, and it will be ready for opening. What more must be done to get the garden ready to open on Good Friday?’
‘Loads of things!’ said Ned. ‘All the information boards probably won’t arrive until early next week and they’ll need putting up. Then the paths and areas not open to the public need roping off … a good tidy up and the paths raking … and more information added to the website.’ He searched his pockets. ‘There’s more. I’ve got an urgent to-do list here somewhere.’
‘All those are minor things,’ Elf said comfortably. ‘Now, gather round and I’ll explain the till. It’s dead simple.’
She demonstrated and then everyone had a go, though I was the only one who repeatedly jammed it. The instructions on inserting a new paper till roll were also beyond my understanding.
James and Steve didn’t have any problem with any of it, and nor did Gertie, when her mind could be dragged away from pondering what cuttings and plants in her greenhouse were surplus to requirements and could be sold in the shop.
‘I think we’ll only put Marnie on the till if some plague wipes out the rest of us,’ Ned said drily. ‘Now, James is used to putting the float in the till and then cashing up when we close, from previous open days. There will, I hope, be a lot more money than before, so at the end of the day, Steve or James can print out the till roll, put in the float again and bring the rest to the office.’
‘I’ll show Steve all that as we go,’ James said.
‘Good, and I should think when it’s fairly quiet, one person could sell the tickets and handle the shop, but you and James can work it to suit yourselves. I know you’ll have to dash out from time to time, Steve, to open or close the Village Hut, or to your other jobs.’
‘They don’t take up much time and I can always clean the Hut first thing in the mornings and the conveniences in the car park after the garden’s shut.’
‘Fine,’ Ned said. He’d found a little notebook now and was scribbling in it.
‘Did you order paper bags?’ Gertie asked suddenly.
‘Yes, brown paper ones, but also some inexpensive cotton totes printed on the side with a design Myfy did for me: a circle of flowers and foliage with little angel or fairy faces peeping out and “Grace Garden” written across the middle. They’re supposed to arrive tomorrow.’
‘They sound lovely,’ I said. It all seemed like a good start, but quite low key, as if Ned was unsure how many people would actually turn up to visit a partly restored old herb garden, but I thought he’d be surprised. People would go a long way to look at an unusual garden, and this was certainly that. Then during the school holidays and the tourist season a lot of visitors to the valley would visit it just because it was another thing to do. He could well soon find himself radically expanding the stock of the shop, if he wanted to make more money.
And I’d have to train him not to call the souvenirs ‘tat’!
‘There’ll be a glossy guidebook,’ Ned said. ‘I’ll have to update it regularly, as parts of the garden are restored. The rose garden will have to be included in the next one – it’s amazing how much difference you’ve made to it already, Marnie. You’re a one-woman powerhouse.’
‘The thought of cleaning up the temple folly certainly speeded up the path clearing today,’ I said. ‘And I keep wondering what other varieties of roses we’ll find in the beds when I start actually working on them.’
I remembered the latest metal tags I’d found and fished them out of the big pocket inside my anorak, along with a generous amount of ripe leaf mould.
‘You give those to me,’ James said, taking them. ‘They’ll come up a treat, like the others.’
‘How much are you charging people to come in?’ asked Steve. ‘It used to be a pound on open days, didn’t it?’
‘Four quid,’ said James. ‘But concessions for geriatrics like us, and the disabled.’
‘Who are you calling a geriatric?’ demanded Gertie. ‘I’m in my prime.’
I grinned, but Ned’s mind was on more serious matters. ‘Maybe when people know how much it costs to get in, they won’t bother,’ he said gloomily.
‘I really don’t think so, Ned,’ I assured him. ‘In fact, if you put out a collecting box asking for donations towards the restoration, people would put in loads of money. Most of them really will be interested in what you’re doing here.’
He brightened up. ‘I did wonder about having a “Become a Friend of the Grace Garden” page on the website, with an annual subscription that gives Friends unlimited free access. There could be newsletters and special events later.’
‘Great idea,’ I enthused. ‘You’ll probably get people volunteering to help in the garden, too.’
‘If their services are free, that would be really useful,’ he said.
Gert said she was going back to the greenhouse, but Ned could shout when he wanted her help spreading the liner in the pond, while Steve and James elected to unpack the stock and play with the sticky price labelling gun.
I returned to my beds of thorns, where there was no feline presence, not even a furry Cheshire Cat grin hanging in the air.
Once Ned had lined the pond, he couldn’t resist the lure of the rose garden either and, leaving Gertie starting to line up some pots of damp-loving plants ready to go into the top marshy area, he appeared with gauntlets and secateurs of his own, and started cutting back the blocked path from the pond end, working even faster than I was.
