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In a hundred years or so people up and down the country, and hopefully around the world, will be scratching their heads wondering why an ancient copy of the Brentford fanzine Beesotted has turned up in their back garden. Designing and building gardens for a living means there will always be some excavation work to be done for walls, terraces, ponds etc… Plenty of opportunity, therefore, for dropping a time capsule.

That’s how it started. A daily newspaper, a bit of loose change, that sort of thing. Something people could relate to. Then it got a bit abstract; a set of dentures under a drive in Richmond, fifteen (empty of course) bottles of London Pride under some steps in Twickenham, an Englebert Humperdink LP sandwiched in a wall in Kingston.

One backfired when I tried to bury a mannequin’s arm (complete with shirt sleeve) under a pond in Teddington. The client came home and spotted a couple of fingers sticking out of the soil. Fortunately she was a friend and saw the funny side of it once we’d calmed her down.

Copies of Beesotted were first buried a couple of years ago. It became such a routine that I can’t even remember where most of them are. I was probably embarrassed about it to begin with. Garden design has grown to be one of those occupations where you need a double-barrelled name to get the best jobs. Much to my amazement it is often frowned upon for a garden designer to get his or her hands dirty during construction.

Imagine the reaction then if my clients knew that the reason for not being able to discuss the benefits of trachelospermum jasminoides as opposed to jasminium officinalis on a Saturday afternoon was because I was busy watching FOOTBALL!! Shock! Horror! “I’ve got a site meeting with the chairman at Griffin Park. Sorry, could take all afternoon, he’s very fussy about his lawn!”

I’m probably the only one who gets a buzz from it all. Whenever I tell anyone about a ‘drop’ they look at me as if to say, “There, there, you’ll be alright, just keep taking the pills.” Its definitely one of those ‘you have to be there’ moments. Anyway it’s done as a matter of course now and, you never know, it might tickle someone one day.

Famous burial sites? Well for a start, two issues found their way into gold medal winning gardens at the Hampton Court Palace Flower Show, one of which was buried at the bottom of a sewerage pipe (no offence to the editor) as part of a water saving garden for Thames Water. The 50th issue is buried under a granite ring on Brighton seafront between the two piers while another, for good measure, was slipped under a water feature in a garden at the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust in Barn Elms. The most pleasurable ‘drop’ however took place three weeks before ‘Groundhog Day’ in a small Cambridge plot in 1999.

Some may call it sad but digging a hole in a Cambridge fan’s garden and burying the special ‘Champions’ edition within sight of the Abbey Stadium was pure delight.

Cleve West