Martin and Marvin on buying seasonally and back garden trees

Martin and Marvin muse about fruit trees in Luton back gardens. Marvin recounts memories of going to the market in Hackney (North London), and buying seasonal fruit and veg.  

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I chatted to local residents Martin and Marvin during a visit to Marsh House Community Centre, Marsh Farm, Luton in October 2024. 

Martin:  

So where I live in Sundon Park, Rossfold Road, it would appear that the estate was either built on an orchard or that when the estate was built, there was a tree put in every garden.  

So the houses where I lived were built in 1959 or early sixties, late fifties, early sixties. Not sure what the rest of the estate is like in Sundon Park, but definitely along my stretch.

I mean, we talk about nowadays, we talk about new developments and having to have, like, solar panels and things like that. It's kind of the same to think that houses would have been built with some element of fruit tree space to grow food along them lines.

Marvin on fruit trees in back gardens: 

[I lived on] Harcourt Street [New Town], off Tennyson Road. That was when I came from London, 1985. Those roads, Harcourt Street, Cowper Street, St Paul's Road, all long roads.

So when you look and come out into the garden, you look left, you look right. It's the same for every garden: apple trees, pear trees, plum trees, rhubarb, you know, whatever else was in the gardens. 

But our garden had loads of fruits and vegetables, and everyone next door had to always go to Miss Roberts’ garden next door. For some reason, her plum tree always grew bigger [plums] than ours and did more. 

So I would always ask her, she just said to me, don't bother, knock the door when you want, just climb over. So we just climb over and eat fruits, like I said, look at the price of fruits and vegetables.

[sighs] And now we chopped them all down. Chopped them down, yeah.

Marvin on buying seasonal: 

So we lived in East London, Hackney. 

The amount of Ridley Road market trips I got to make a week with my grandmother, you know, always buying fruits, vegetables and she liked eating natural anyway.

So she never eat tinned stuff, frozen stuff. So it's always to the market. But that also stuck in my head - the seasons of when different fruits and vegetables came around. 

So we got fruits and vegetables that's here all year round. Is that a sign? With two reasons. They're either bringing them from other countries that produce them because of the climate or are they genetically modified, because I remember there was things was ate in my house, fruits, according to the season. 

We couldn't wait until what would be mango seasons or lychees or certain fruits that I liked were seasonal. 

Now, a lot more lychees and mangoes, they're still, I think, seasonal, even though if you go supermarket, you can get them all year round. But a lot of those fruits and vegetables, I say, these ain't right because I remember them making all of these trips to the market with my grandmother and I'm saying, these colours ain't right. This pattern that's inside ain't right. These seeds ain't right. If there is any seeds. You can't even find an orange, a grape, a lemon, a lime with seeds. 

Like you get the little watermelons, got the little white seeds in it. But I remember from original days when [you had] black, flattish seeds. These ones now got some white seeds.

[Recorded on 24 October 2023]