Dr Smart was certainly a remarkable man. In World War Two he worked as a ship’s doctor – swimming from raft to raft to tend to the injured after the boat he was on was torpedoed and sunk. He was awarded the MBE.
But it is for an achievement in the second half of his remarkable life that forms this ‘Letter’: his garden – for which he was also given an award – the Victoria Medal of Honour in Horticulture. At the presentation ceremony the judges commented:
‘Jimmy Smart is a Doctor and I feel that his patients must have been made to flourish with the same strength and good health as his plants so that he could spend as much time in his garden as in the surgery!’
What does Dr Smart’s Garden (aka. Marwood Hill Gardens) mean to me?
Memories of the first snowdrops; picnics on the lawn by the quaint English teashop; watching the Folksy Theatre Company perform with such magnificent natural scenery laid out before us. Beautiful Days!
