At last year’s Austwick Cuckoo Festival I picked up a croquet set at the bric-a-brac stall for a fiver. She’s a beauty, a Franklin Professional, with no missing bits, just one mallet needing a stick repair, and a couple of balls a tad faded, victims of some sloppy putting-away (there will be none of that on my watch). As a student at Oxford university I believed firmly in cliché, so naturally the evenings of my summer terms were spent picnicking on punts, putting on outdoor plays in quads and playing highly competitive games of croquet. Despite the Sebastien Flyte-ish affectation, I can’t think of much I enjoyed more than thwacking balls through hoops as the summer sun dipped behind the honeyed spires, and though the summer evenings in Oxford tend to be a shade more clement than those in North Yorkshire, this month’s fine weather has demonstrated that one cannot rule sunny days out entirely.
So I plan to prepare a sporting lawn, for croquet, possibly bowls, and badminton, a sport which despite its early adoption by the English nobility (it came from India to the Duke of Beaufort’s Badminton House, where it got its name) seems to have been largely abandoned by us Brits as a lawn sport. There is a painting in the Tate by David Inshaw, “The Badminton Game”, which depicts two players sporting long frocks and unsuitable footwear mid-rally, their court flanked by perfectly clipped yew; my court will need to make do with some amateurishly pruned roses, and maybe sheep for neighbours.
A badminton court is 44ft x 20ft, or about 13 metres x 6 metres. A championship croquet lawn is a whopping 35yd x 28yd, about the size of a five-a-side football pitch, however regulations allow for play on a smaller lawn as long as the five by four proportions are maintained. With the removal of a path to nowhere, my front lawn offers up a flat-ish rectangle at a creditable 45ft x 36ft, bordered by a ha-ha, providing an extra spicy hazard to wayward play.
Now that the pigs, Hazel and Acorn, have done their work in the front garden, ploughing their way through a gnarled tangle of bramble, thistle and nettle, unearthing an almighty quantity of roots (which I have collected into a pile about the size of a Mini), I need to restore some order. While the pigs are marvels at rooting out the nasties, what they’ve left in their snouty wake looks like the Somme brought to North Yorkshire.
This lawn needs to be flat, for fairly obvious reasons; balls need to roll straight, lunges for shuttlecocks need to not result in trips to A&E and, practically, mowers need to be easily pushable. Naively I assumed that all this lumpen no man’s land would need would be a quick going-over with the heavy roller, but I was wrong. I had stubborn lumps, buried grassy tussocks, and hefty clods to be hauled from the mire using a heavy pick, and broken up using a hoe (and sometimes the heel of my boot); there were rocks, some as big as my head, to be exhumed and lugged bucket by bucket to the spoil heap.
Hercules laboured for 10 years, but he never faced The Lawn. Ten days of this has almost ended me, but as compensation I now have the shoulders of a Roman god and can crack walnuts with my bare hands. And I did unearth some sweet curiosities; bits of pot, scissors, a silver spoon, an elegant cigarette lighter, two George VI coins and what looks like it could be a sword handle (but is more likely something the scaffolders left behind); each find celebrated out loud with the word “treasure”, before returning to my labour.
My dad’s 1975 edition of the Readers Digest Illustrated Guide to Gardening is wonderfully instructive on lawns. It gives instructions for three basic types; the Fine Lawn is broadly for looking nice but will cope with the occasional dainty game of bowls or croquet; the Games Lawn provides the perfect surface but requires considerable skill to keep in good condition; and the Utility Lawn is capable of withstanding both hard wear and considerable neglect — so this is the lawn for me. I will be sowing, on the advice of the Readers Digest, a glorious-sounding cocktail of Chewing’s Fescue, Rye, Crested dog’s tail, and Rough stalk meadow grass.
But before I sow I need to prepare the surface. My rectangle needs to be levelled, roughly at least, knocking in homemade wooden pegs spaced roughly 6ft apart, their tops levelled with a straight piece of wood and a spirit level, lines painted 4 inches from the top and joined with string. A firm soil bed then needs to be prepared, first adding an inch or so of fresh topsoil, next rolling the surface in two directions at right angles to one another (this should be easy now we’re level and lump-free), then treading the ground in, with the heel of a good boot (when the soil is dry, to avoid over compaction), then raking, again in two directions. Finally fertilising, sowing and praying for rain.
Croquet regulations state that the grass should be mown to 5mm. We’ll see about the 5mm, but my sporting lawn will need to be mown. We’re good at mowers here. Those you see after hours at Wimbledon, the Open and on cricket squares across the country are machines of great beauty, made by companies with romantic names like Dennis. They, along with Allett and Ransomes, still hand-build their mowers here in the UK. Mowers are serious business, as readers of Grassbox, the magazine of The Old Lawnmower Club will tell you. I have a 1970s Ransomes push mower, an Ajax Mark 4, a mechanical marvel, bought from a restorer I found on eBay. Robert Ransome founded his business in Norfolk in 1789 and in 1832 built the world’s first domestic lawnmower. Mine proudly sports the old Royal Warrant on its shiny green livery.
Push mowers are making a comeback. Early British push mowers, unlike many modern electric mowers, are indestructible. Some, like the Qualcast Super Panther, the Webb Witch, or early Ajax’s, are becoming highly collectible. Along with a growing number of people I would prefer to run my garden petrol free, and I love the rhythmic whirr they make as they cut (my dad had an even older push mower and I always loved the sound of him mowing).
But also why should this lawn stop being a labour now. Between push-mowing my sports lawn and seasonally scything the remaining acre and a half I certainly shan’t want for honest graft. Who needs gym membership when you’ve got grass to mow?
From “Croquet” by Alice Guerin Crist
In a garden where the may made the straggling fences gay
And the roses cream and scarlet shed their petals on the breeze
Your maiden aunts and I, and you, demure and shy,
Played a sober game of croquet underneath the spreading trees.
Just beyond the garden wall we could hear the merry call
Of the tennis players yonder, flitting gaily in the sun,
But we recked not of their glee, for all too content were we,
And we weren’t flushed and heated when our quiet game was done.
What a picture sweet you made! As you rested in the shade,
Listening to my eager chatter with a glance of grave surprise;
Was it nectar, love, or tea that your white hands poured for me
In the dainty Wedgewood tea-cups that were bluer than your eyes?
Patrick Grant is the founder of Community Clothing, a judge on BBC television’s “The Great British Sewing Bee” and author of “Less” (HarperCollins)
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