Tales From The Potting Shed!

The Potting Shed? Has madness struck at Apperley Towers? Has he decided to become a toy soldier conscientious objector and foresworn the dice and the 4.7 Naval gun? Fear not dear reader for none of these events have happened, I just want to introduce a new feature to the blog. 

My late father had a passion in his life which entertained most of his waking hours when not at work. He was a gardener. He had a small garden but loved every inch of it and was never happier than when sitting in his shed, a cigarette and a cup of tea in hand . It was his escape from the mundane and when not in the shed or the garden, he would be reading books on gardening and horticulture and planning his future projects. A nice outing would be to a garden centre, or a large house open to the public, where he could study the gardens and plants therein. 

I found that toy soldiers and wargaming were my 'passion and obsession' but the similarities in behaviour are remarkably similar when you think about it! How many hours do we spend thinking about that next army or project, painting and modelling, reading books on uniforms and military history and actually wargaming with our beloved toy soldiers? An afternoon out to a historic building, preferably with Civil War or other military connections anyone?

I confess I am not a gardener! I love to see a beautiful garden and can appreciate the effort and skill that goes into creating one, but that's where my interest ends.  Fortunately, my wife of  44 years (this 1st of August) ,has always taken an interest and seems to have a natural ability for gardening . She sometimes employs me with the 'heavier' tasks but generally is responsible for the garden here at Apperley Towers. 

I do however, love to cook and eat the produce my wife grows. Apperley Towers has been blessed with amazing harvests this year of Strawberries, Raspberries, Tomatoes, Beans, Courgettes and Potatoes, to name but a few. 

So why a feature on gardening you ask again? Well my idea of gardening is confined to the wonderful toys produced by Britains in the 1930s and 1960s. 

They made an incredibly innovative range in metal between the first and second world wars, which enabled children (and adults!) to create gardens in miniature. The range lasted from 1930 to 1941. The idea was then reintroduced 20 years later in 1961, with a range in plastic. The plastic technology enabled even finer detail and the range was a triumph of ingenuity and innovation. Sadly, apart from a short lived rebranded revival in the mid 1970s, the full range was only in production between 1961 and 1971.

1966 Floral Garden Catalogue Page

Thankfully there is no shortage of the plastic range in the secondhand market so they must have sold well. I suspect more importantly however, adults could see the value in the toys and and kept them for future generations, hence the relative abundance of them today. 

As for the lead range from the 1930's, well they are not that very hard to find either.  In view of their age however, pieces in near mint condition can be quite expensive. I have found the traditional toy fairs to be a happy hunting ground for these and quite often find pieces in the bottom of mixed hollow cast boxes and trays. If like me, restoration and repainting is almost preferable to you, these sort of finds are ideal.

As regular readers of this blog know, I get huge satisfaction from 'world building', creating appropriate scenery for my toy soldiers to explore and fight over. So this new feature will be an occasional look at my existing plastic garden collection and how I have made that a practical proposition for the wargames table by incorporating them into buildings and other pieces of 'set dressing'.

A park is one feature I plan to include in a future scenario

More so however, I will be giving you a look at my pre war garden collection, as it develops over the coming months. I have invested a reasonable amount of time and money in acquiring quite a substantial amount of the pre war lead pieces, a lot of which show the signs of age, being almost 100 years old. I shall be renovating, repainting and utilising these treasures in a number of ways and I hope that some of my readers will find this entertaining. As at the time of writing I have done almost nothing with this lead treasure other than sort it out and store it away. This blog feature will hopefully help me to move into the next phase for the collection.

Lots of lead blooms awaiting paint and planting!

I suspect this may not be the most popular feature with all of my select band of readers, but I hope that it may give some ideas and inspiration to those of you who do enjoy the scenic aspects of toy soldiering. To those who are only here for martial splendour, I hope you will forgive me this indulgence! I promise you that there will be toy soldiers galore along with wargames aplenty in the coming months! 

A final thought. Call it what you will, but this is I suppose an indirect legacy from and homage to, my late father, who died suddenly at the relatively young age of 58.  To this day I can recite the opening credits and introduction to Gardeners Question time, which we had to listen to every Sunday lunchtime on the radio. It was my fathers favourite program of the week and he loved to try to answer the questions alongside the panel of experts. He was quite often right as well and I like to think that wherever he rests now, there will be a garden close by and a radio ready for Sundays lunchtime listening.

Tara a bit!