Silent Spring

‘The atmosphere in the gardens was magical, the sense of deep pause, diggers and dumpers laying idle, the background traffic noise, the roaring of jet engines, even the barking of dogs seemed to have subsided - everything had stopped’ 

The 21st of March marked the Spring Equinox – a time when the northern hemisphere tips itself gently towards the sun in its inexorable rise towards brighter, longer days and bountiful crops. This year, however, something strange hung in the air: the threat of a killer virus had already spread to a large part of the world and its deathly grip was tightening around Britain.

Some pushed on, determined to ignore the writing on the wall and throwing caution to the wind, but many began to panic-buy in anticipation of something very few of us had lived through before, a pandemic induced lockdown.

In the gardens, the atmosphere was a very different one. By the time the lockdown was officially announced in one of the Government’s daily press conferences that were to become a staple of our locked-down lives, Ministers were spelling out the start of a journey none of us know the final destination of, and huge rippling shocks have been felt across the globe. All of us retreated to our homes, a mixture of self-preservation and duty – not wanting to be the victim or the vector of this ‘novel’ virus.

But at the same time, something remarkable began to happen. For the first time in what felt like a lifetime a Silent Spring fell across the land. Not the kind that the late American marine biologist and conservationist, Rachel Carson, described in her famous book of that title in which she warned of insect die offs and wildlife collapse (something all too prescient in recent years) but instead almost the complete opposite.

The world, as we had all known it, turned off, the torrents of traffic on our roads dwindled to a trickle, with only those delivering the bare essentials and, of course, the brave frontline carers the only ones with the permission and fortitude to venture out. The skies cleared of air traffic and Bournemouth airport, which is just a few miles away, became a graveyard of ‘dreamliners’ as BA hastily parked its mostly grounded fleet there.

What arose instead was a collective and enforced purgatory. After what had been a long winter of heavy rains and storms, the clouds cleared, and the sun began to shine. In the gardens, a twisted irony after battling through those endless squalls and torrential downpours as it emerged into a pristine Spring, (arguably a gardener’s paradise), but instead of revelling in it, we had to down tools and stay home which seemed a cruel fate.

Paul, our head Gardener, swore under his breath as he realised that the lockdown meant seedlings couldn’t be planted and so it was left to me to slip down to the gardens on my daily exercise – a watering can in each hand – and creep across the water meadows to water the trees and plants that we had battled so hard to plant during the dormant months of winter.

Over the next few weeks it was just me watering the trees, the 120 scented rose bushes and anything else that now found itself waking up to an unseasonably warm and dry spring. The atmosphere in the gardens was magical, the sense of deep pause, diggers and dumpers laying idle, the background traffic noise, the roaring of jet engines, even the barking of dogs seemed to have subsided - everything had stopped. Instead of all that manmade noise, it was replaced with the cacophony of birdsong, a rich orchestra of songbirds, from the common to the increasingly rare – blue tits, chaffinches, a distant cuckoo and even a nightingale. It was like having the natural world turned into High-Definition.

Cycling to the gardens, I felt as if I was in the opening episode to a zombie movie; empty streets devoid of humans, yet the gardens felt like a true sanctuary. It was as if ‘the real world’ had been hiding here for just such an occasion, lying quietly dormant until the inevitable happened – it all stopped – even if that lasted for just a moment. 

Many were soon pleading for a return to ‘normal’, but deep down knowing that where we had been heading before the pandemic struck was just not that ‘normal’. Still, the sense of uncertainty remains vital but there was a deep reassurance from the world around us this spring, singing loud and clear: ‘we’re still here’ it seemed to cry, and for once we have no choice but to listen.