By Lynn Durrell
Dad was born in St Leonards in 1911. He attended St Leonards school and then worked with his father who was head gardener at Hengrove House. He wanted to be a carpenter, but in those days, sons followed in their father’s profession.
Dad was married in The Lee in 1936 and shortly afterwards moved with the owners of Hengrove House to become head gardener at their new home in Petworth, Sussex. Mum and Dad used to cycle all the way from Petworth to Swan Bottom and St Leonards to see their parents, stay awhile… and then cycle all the way back.
With the outbreak of war, we all moved back to Swan Bottom to be near the family and after the war, Dad became self-employed doing gardens and built up his own small holding. We had geese, pigs, free-range hens and two greenhouses. He grew and sold various plants and vegetables. Being Dad, when he sold a score of cabbage plants for sixpence he would always give extra plants in case some of them didn’t survive!
Dad was a keen supporter of both The Lee and Ballinger Flower Shows; he grew wonderful vegetables and lovely sweet peas. I can remember Mum often saying “Can I have some runner beans from the garden Perce?” and Dad replying “After the show duck, after the show”.
He won many cups at the shows, he won the ‘Open Cup’ at The Lee thirteen times and the ‘Sweet Pea Cup’ was nearly always on the sideboard.
The family moved to Hunts Green in 1969 and by then Dad had begun working for British Oxygen at Chartridge Conference Centre, where he worked for 19 years before retirement.
Of course, he never really retired because he then helped out at different gardens in The Lee and anyone else who needed some pruning or garden maintenance. He gathered friends like you would gather flowers.
By Geoffrey PalmerIn 1969 the Langstons and the Palmers moved to Hunts Green within a few weeks of each other and though we didn’t get to know each other for some time we slowly became aware of one of his qualities, his good neighbourliness.
Old Mrs Chandler lived opposite in the Thatched Cottage. She had always been an early riser and even in her later years she had still done her ‘little bit of baking’ as she put it and had her dusters on the line by about 5:30. But when she became frailer, every morning Percy would walk along at about seven o’clock and knock on the door to see if she was alright and if she wanted anything. Later he would do the same for Mrs Edgar and Harold Ayres. Of course nobody asked him to do these things and he didn’t want thanks or recognition… he was just unobtrusively being Percy.
But it wasn’t until 1981 that he really came into our lives when, although fully occupied in other people’s gardens, he said he would do what little he could to help us. I’m sure you can imagine how big that little was… After that he never really left our garden.
Over the years he and I have spent countless happy hours together in the garden, chatting, laughing, planning, “just turning stones” as he would say but usually with me just watching him planting, pruning, taking cuttings or, with those huge hands and fingers like enormous sausages, deftly pricking out seedlings.
With his passing there has disappeared forever a wealth of experiential knowledge and wisdom from his own lifetime, and his father’s before him, of working with nature and all things horticultural.
I don’t think I’ve come across anyone so centred in his world, so at ease, so at one with his surroundings.