| Where memory meets evidence |
| Episode IV Memory Needs Evidence Why observation matters more than certainty. |
| One of my earliest memories has nothing whatsoever to do with gardening, wildlife or the weather. I was three, perhaps four years old, living in Australia after my parents emigrated there from Britain under the £10 Pom scheme. I remember walking quite happily out of a shop carrying a light green plastic air-filled train nearly two feet long. It squeaked when it was squeezed, and for reasons known only to a small child, I had decided it belonged with me. My mother later explained that I hadn’t stolen it in any deliberate sense. I had picked it up, become fascinated by it and wandered out of the shop without the faintest understanding that it wasn’t mine. Nearly sixty years later I can still remember that train. What I cannot remember with anything like the same clarity is the name of the shop, what the weather was doing that day or exactly what happened next. That has always fascinated me. Why does one memory remain so vivid while thousands of others quietly disappear? More importantly, if memory can preserve something so clearly while allowing so much else to fade, how much confidence should we place in the things we believe we remember? That question sits at the heart of this series. It would be very easy to write about the natural world by relying entirely upon memory. Most of us can remember summers that seemed endless, winters that felt colder, birds that appeared more common and gardens that somehow looked different. The difficulty is that memory is not a tape recorder. It is a remarkable human ability, but it is also selective. It preserves moments that mattered to us personally while allowing countless ordinary days to dissolve into the background. For that reason, I have never believed memory should stand alone. It needs evidence. Not because memory is untrustworthy, but because evidence gives memory somewhere firm to stand. Over the years I have realised that I think about memories in a rather unusual way. Whether that is simply part of my personality or connected with the way my mind works, I honestly couldn’t say. When I remember something, I rarely begin with the event itself. I begin by asking myself how old I was. From there I work out the year, then I begin attaching people, places and events to that point in time. Once the chronology feels right, I ask another question. Does the memory fit? It is a habit I have developed naturally rather than consciously. I do not remember life as a series of disconnected stories. I remember it as a timeline, constantly checking one memory against another to see whether the pieces belong together. Occasionally they do not. More often they do. That process has become even more important since becoming a professional gardener. Looking after more than eighty gardens means memory alone is no longer enough. Every garden changes, often in ways so gradual that they are almost impossible to notice from one day to the next. A shrub leans a little further towards the light. A lawn begins thinning beneath a tree. A border quietly becomes drier than it was the previous summer. None of these changes announces themselves dramatically. They reveal themselves through repeated observation. That is one reason I encourage my gardeners and my clients alike to take photographs of their gardens. Most of us think photographs exist to preserve happy occasions, but I have found they perform another valuable task. They show us things we never realised we had missed. The camera often notices details that our eyes quietly overlooked. Looking back through old photographs can reveal a healthier shrub, a fuller tree, or a flower border that has gradually changed over several years. On occasions, photographs have even proved my own memory wrong. Not often. But often enough to remind me that certainty should always be approached with caution. That is not a weakness. It is one of the greatest lessons observation can teach us. Earlier in this series, I wrote about my childhood in Australia and my memory of never seeing frost where I lived. Some readers might have assumed I was claiming frost never occurred in Victoria. That was never my intention. Historical records clearly show that frosts occurred in many parts of the state, just as they still do today. My memory is much simpler than that. I never remember seeing them. Those are two very different statements. One is a claim about an entire region. The other is an honest description of personal experience. That distinction matters enormously. As we grow older, it becomes increasingly tempting to mistake our own experience for universal truth. We all do it from time to time. We remember a particular summer, a favourite bird or a familiar landscape and assume everyone else’s experience must have been much the same. Yet nature rarely behaves so neatly. One person’s childhood may have been shaped by the coast, another’s by farmland and another’s by a city. They may all remember the same decade while remembering entirely different worlds. That is why observation matters more than certainty. Observation leaves room for questions. Certainty often closes them. This became obvious to me while researching some of the subjects in this series. On several occasions, I found historical records confirming observations I had made over many years. On other occasions they refined them. Occasionally they challenged them. None of that diminished my memories. If anything, it made them more valuable because they became part of a larger story rather than remaining isolated recollections. The relationship between memory and evidence reminds me very much of gardening itself. Imagine walking into a garden for the first time and immediately deciding what is wrong with it before looking properly. You might begin pruning a shrub that is actually suffering from drought. You might blame poor soil when the real problem is shade. You might remove plants that needed another season to establish. Good gardeners do not begin with conclusions. They begin with observation. Only then do they decide what the evidence is telling them. That may be why I have become increasingly cautious whenever I hear absolute statements about the natural world. “Summers were always hotter.” “Winters were colder.” “Butterflies were everywhere.” “Gardens never needed watering.” Some of those statements contain elements of truth. Some are heavily influenced by nostalgia. Most are far more complicated than they first appear. The older I become, the less interested I am in winning those arguments. I would rather understand them. People sometimes ask why I spend so much time looking at gardens before beginning work. The answer is surprisingly simple. Gardens tell stories. Not dramatic stories. Quiet ones. A patch of moss where grass once grew. A shrub reaching for light. A bird repeatedly feeding beneath the same hedge. Leaves browning earlier than expected—new seedlings appearing where none grew before. Every one of those observations becomes a small piece of evidence. On its own, it tells us very little. Repeated over months and years, it begins revealing patterns. That is how environmental understanding really develops. Not through one extraordinary event. Through thousands of ordinary observations made by people prepared to keep looking. That is why I have always admired the notebooks of naturalists and gardeners. Long before computers and satellites, people were recording the arrival of swallows, the flowering of hawthorn, the first frost and the last snowfall. Individually, those notes may have seemed unremarkable. Together they became an extraordinary record of changing landscapes and changing seasons. Memory began the story. Observation continued it. Evidence preserved it. I was asked recently why anyone should trust my observations. The answer is that they do not have to. In fact, I would rather they did not. Instead, I would invite them to walk beside me and look at what I have seen. If they notice something different, I would like to hear it. If history tells us something I had overlooked, I would much rather learn from it than argue against it. That is how understanding grows. Not through certainty. Through curiosity. The purpose of Within Living Memory has never been to persuade anyone that my memories are more important than theirs. It has been to place personal experience alongside observation, historical evidence and the changing natural world, then quietly ask what they reveal together. Memory without evidence can sometimes mislead us. Evidence without memory becomes little more than forgotten information. Together, however, they become something rather more valuable. They become understanding. As gardeners, we often discover that the most important thing we can do is stop for a moment before reaching for the tools. Perhaps life asks the same of us. Observe first. Question second. Understand third. Only then decide what you believe. |
| About our writing & imagery Most articles reflect our real gardening experience and reflection. Some use AI in drafting or research, but never for voice or authority. Featured images may show our photos, original AI-generated visuals, or, where stated, images credited to others. All content is shaped and edited by Earthly Comforts, expressing our own views. |
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