I arrived at Enid Lashley's
Santa Cruz home after darkness had fallen and the frogs had
begun their hollow, haunting back and forth. Immediately I
regretted the late call. Because I couldn't experience the
full impact of her professionally tended garden. Her house
occupies one lot. Her passion for horticulture takes up another.
She prides herself on having successfully nurtured plants
that aren't even meant for the tropics. (Of all things there's
a pot of lush, glossy holly in the driveway.) A rustic, wooden
potting shed sits at one end of the yard. A storeroom is at
the other. And I'm told there's an anthurium shed behind the
mango tree.
The erect, agile 83-year-old says gardening is her only exercise.
This along with the jet black pony tail and waxed brows make
it difficult to believe that she had already retired when
she started the flower arranging group at the Horticultural
Society two decades ago. (She worked at the Ministry of Works
for almost 40 years and was the first woman head of a division
when she left). I'd have liked to discuss the early "struggle"
of women in management positions in Trinidad and Tobago's
public sector. But Lashley wasn't having it. She's spent her
day cutting flowers from her garden for sale at the Society's
Lady Chancellor Hill Flower Market and making notes for our
interview. The flower arranging group will commemorate its
20th anniversary next week. And that's what I was there to
talk about, she reminded.
"January 1988," she starts. "We asked what
groups people would be interested in joining. 14 wanted to
do flower arranging." By then she had already been a
member of the Society for 16 years. The idea of composing
centerpieces or decorating church halls caught her fancy,
but, really, horticulture was her thing. Yet she dove into
the task of organising and inspiring the group. Pearl Clarke
Alfred (Lashley is particular about every single name, every
single date) offered basic tuition to a small group for a
few months. Then Lorraine Mahabal and Laurel Mc Dowel took
over. A core group learned the basics. Attracting advanced
trainers and increased participation was more difficult. There
was a shaky start in which the group tried everything from
sessions on arrangements for bridal parties to competitions
with attractive prizes to generate enthusiasm.
"In the meantime I wasn't wasting time," Lashley
said. She bought book after book by English authors. The wastelands
left by World War II bombings inspired a renewed interest
in nature and beauty in London. And the interest in flower
arranging was revived. Arrangers wrote. And Lashley read.
Voraciously. The glimpses that these pages offered opened
a whole new world of possibility in terms of ideas and networking.
In fact a turning point came in 1990 when a friend handed
her a copy of the magazine The Flower Arranger.
"When I opened the book and saw what was happening all
over the world I was amazed that they had moved away from
the methods of the forties. People were shocked to see wood
in flower arranging, fruits and vegetables and so on. It was
like you're going down one road all the time and you turn
a corner and saw all these things you didn't see before. I
promptly started to subscribe and to move the girls forward."
She's as excited about this as a fashionista is about the
latest Cosmo: "The point is," she says, "these
books tell you what's going to happen from month to month."
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