ROLAND DIBBEN
Many of you will be aware that one of our longest serving plot holders, Roland Dibben, sadly passed away at the end of March 2019 at the age of 98. Roland and his wife Jean have worked a plot on the Aldwickbury site, behind their house in High Firs Crescent, right from the time that the site opened in the 1950s. Since then Jean and Roland have dedicated most of their spare time to their garden and to tending their fruit and vegetables.
The occasional family holiday to the Isle of White with their children Ian and Jane aside, Jean and Roland were happiest working hard and monitoring progress on their plot throughout the growing season. Conversation with Roland would inevitably come back to his latest growing innovation (Roland was an "early adopter" of the no-dig method - if you can apply the term early adopter to a gardener in his 90s) or to discussion on some aspect of the local wildlife. Updates on frogs spawning in the pond, blue tits fledging in a box, the tortoise emerging from hibernation, the hen-blackbird defending her nest and chicks from marauding magpies were the important matters of the day for Roland, and I’m sure that those of us who knew him will miss his detailed bulletins.
Written by Trevor Chrome
The occasional family holiday to the Isle of White with their children Ian and Jane aside, Jean and Roland were happiest working hard and monitoring progress on their plot throughout the growing season. Conversation with Roland would inevitably come back to his latest growing innovation (Roland was an "early adopter" of the no-dig method - if you can apply the term early adopter to a gardener in his 90s) or to discussion on some aspect of the local wildlife. Updates on frogs spawning in the pond, blue tits fledging in a box, the tortoise emerging from hibernation, the hen-blackbird defending her nest and chicks from marauding magpies were the important matters of the day for Roland, and I’m sure that those of us who knew him will miss his detailed bulletins.
Written by Trevor Chrome