A couple of news items this week started me off on a train of thought about crime and how the garden fits into a sequence of events and becomes the silent witness.
Zack, a newly born baby boy who still had his umbilical cord attached when he was abandoned in a garden in Liverpool is the innocent in a desperate crime that only Zack's mother can solve.
The second was the discovery of a man's body in the garden of a house in Greater Manchester.
Somewhere, someone knows the facts behind both of these cases yet they will remain a secret until either the police make a breakthrough in their investigations, the person or persons involved make themselves known or information by a third party forces a resolution.
If gardens could talk they would tell many a tale of mystery, passion and ultimately death yet they cannot speak.
Once the police get on the trail, the garden, as a crime scene, can tell the story in so many different ways.
From disturbed soil to freshly pointed joints on the patio there are clues that a forensic scientist may well be able to piece together facts that my help to find the perpetrators, locate a body or link to another place.
There are many gardens in history that have witnessed a heinous crime.
Fred and Rosemary West murdered their daughter Heather and buried her body in their garden at Cromwell Street. The garden remained silent for seven years before a police search recovered any evidence.
The garden at the Muswell Hill home of serial killer Dennis Nilsen was forced to remain silent after the killer burnt the body of his first victim Stephen Holmes on a bonfire in his garden.
On a lighter note
Of course, not everything that a garden may witness to is as horrific as a murder.
A garden in South Norwood watched helplessly as the thief responsible for taking the Jules Rimet trophy hid it under the garden's hedge. It was just six weeks before the 1966 World Cup and it was a moment that would make Pickles the terrier who sniffed the trophy out, famous across the globe.
A miniature safari park.
At night, all creatures great and small come into the garden to mate, fight and play. Quite often a battlefield as foxes, badgers and cats fight for territorial gain but more often than not a delicious feeding ground.
Worms and insects find their way to the surface where foxes, badgers and hedgehogs gourge themselves as the world slumbers. Frogs and toads devour the snails and slugs while rats scurry in great numbers through hedges, across fences, along window sills. The nocturnal garden is a busy garden.
I could go on and on but the garden has a unique place as the most ubiquitous of witnesses that so often cannot tell the tale of what it has seen.
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