Olly Mann: Planting Memories

“Is there anything you want from Grandma’s flat?”. My uncle, texting me, last week. 

His mum had passed away the week before; aged 96, in a hospice, completely compos mentis, indefatigable as ever. He’d begun the painful yet necessary task of sorting through her belongings. Dividing them into the familiar post-mortem piles: Retain, Sell, Donate. 

I required zero thinking time. Yes, I would like her aloe vera plant, please. In the orange pot, you know the one? To the left of the porch. Nothing special to look at.

Here’s why. Sometime around 1975, Grandma received this plant as a gift. It came courtesy of the local butcher in recognition of her loyal custom. A gesture. A knick-knack.

It could, I suppose, just as likely have been a calendar, or a fountain pen, or a box of biscuits. But it just happened to be a pleasant-ish pot plant, which Grandma, who always had green fingers, appreciated and placed in her doorway.

Five years later, my mum married the butcher’s son. And had me.

When my father’s mother died in 1993, Grandma revealed to me how this particular plant was different to the dozens of others she had in her home. How this one had history.

It was, she suggested, a living, prospering embodiment of the relationship that existed between the two sides of my family. As, indeed, was I. 

In recent years, whenever we’ve visited Grandma’s flat, I’ve attempted to enthuse my children with this compelling concept.

“Look at that!”, I’d exclaim, like a Victorian ringmaster. “That was a gift your great-grandma bought your other great-grandma! Before they were even related! It’s older than me!”.

Then my kids would shrug, and ask Grandma for a sweet.

Numerous times, Grandma gave me clippings of this sacred plant, in the hope I might foster my own and continue the legend. Yet, every time, my offshoots died of neglect.

Aloe vera is reasonably hardy, but, as I’ve learned, if you put it above a radiator, it dies. If you under-water it, it dies. If you over-water it, it dies. It doesn’t mix well with toddlers, or dogs, or under-heated flooring, or under-counter lighting. It doesn’t stay upright when you transport it in a car.

In short, with my woeful horticultural skills, I’m better off with a plastic one from IKEA.

But that didn’t used to matter, because I could badger Grandma for another clipping and try again. Now I can’t. If I kill this one—Grandma’s master plant, the Mann family heirloom—it will be irreplaceable.

So, straight after I asked my uncle for this treasure to be bestowed into my custody, I put in place an insurance policy: the plant will go and live with Ann, my mother-in-law.

In stark contrast to me, my wife’s mother is a genius with a greenhouse (indeed, the fact she even has a greenhouse indicates she has a substantially more evolved relationship with flora and fauna than I do).

I’ve seen her grow marrows the size of volleyballs, and sunflowers as tall as trees. She seems instinctively to know which flowers in her care require a drink, which a mere spritz, and which a veritable swim. In her house, plants live.

This afternoon, I took delivery of the famous aloe vera. In the four weeks that have elapsed since Grandma left for hospital, the plant has begun to brown and fray at the edges (not because it's been left unattended, but because those attending to it—my Grandmother’s carer, my mum, my uncle—don’t know what they’re doing, either).

Within hours of it arriving in my possession, I carefully double-strapped it into our car seat, as if it were a newborn baby leaving the maternity ward, and commuted it slowly up the A1.

Upon arrival, Ann triaged and treated it for over-watering, transferred into a new pot, and placed it by some French doors "to dry out". 

The plan is for Ann to keep hold of the original plant—at least until I can be trusted to look after its progeny. In time, she can teach me how to care for its cuttings properly, and then maybe one day I can confidently settle the mother plant in my own front porch for posterity.

In the meantime, Ann will disperse cuttings and clippings among her own family, as Grandma used to do.

My wife’s two sisters, for example, are both far better at tending plants than I am, so it is quite conceivable that they, too, will spread cuttings of the plant around their partners’ families; that this humble plant might yet spread across my entire extended family.

What an amazing outcome, for a gift that my dad’s mum gave my mum’s mum before I even existed.

There are oodles of potential mementos from a person’s life one can keep to remember them by. Photos, recipes, jewellery, crockery, fragrance—all of these can do the trick.

And, no doubt, a bit of cash from their will can be jolly nice, too.

But I’m content with the aloe vera pot plant from Grandma’s front porch. My Family Tree.