The Secret Garden

The station that I travel from yielded an unexpected surprise a few weeks back. Clever commuters know exactly which carriage they want to get into, which door they want to leave by, how close they want to be to the exit when they alight, where the nearest fire escape/escalator/extinguisher/ are, and plan their steps accordingly. I always used to be a back of the train gal. If I wanted to go to Victoria tube station which meant changing on to the Victoria line then that meant getting out at Euston/Bank branch and although there were many exits, the absolute best one, the only one to take if you wanted to go to Victoria, was the one at the back end of the platform because it wasn't a general exit it was a special one, like a secret tunnel, that went straight from the Northern Line to the Victoria Line so that all the riff raff not taking the Victoria line wouldn't get tangled around your feet...you get the idea. So for quite some years I would head down the steps on to the platform straight to the back end of the platform, ready to leap on to the last carriage, but not near the last doors as they don't ever open at Euston because the platform's too short. (I know. Let's not go there.) But recently, the organisation I work for moved offices, and Charing Cross became my new destination, and if I want to be precisely opposite the exit at Charing Cross, or even at Leicester Square so that I can add in an educational walk past the National Portrait  Gallery, the place to be is at the front end of the train. Not the very front mind, the perfect place is the single door at the end of the second carriage. So. On the first day of my new commuter route to Charing Cross, I come down the steps at my station and instead of turning right to head to the back end of the platform, I turn left and walk towards the front. It's a suburban station so it's not underground, and it's got a retro canopy over half of it which is quite cute and then the rest of the front of the platform is out in the full open air. And there, I discover, the most dazzling garden. It's amazing. It is mostly planted, with a riot of purple, yellow and white flowers and flowering shrubs. But it also has random, beautiful handmade pots, some of them disarmingly chipped or lopsided, containing purple pansies or forget me nots. In between the grass plants, there are rattan animal figures. A hedgehog, with pansies growing out of its head. Little straw pigs with violets growing out of their backs. The fence is adorned with bits of fired pottery with half finished purple designs, and there are bits of purple and lilac ribbon rippling in the breeze, and even some kids' pictures that have been very simply framed and hang in the backdrop. A discree and dusty sign half hidden in the foliage proclaims that this station has won awards for its garden. I'm not in the least bit suprised. It's so beautiful it should be in guidebooks. It probably is in a guidebook somewhere bent on dragging tourists to lesser known parts of London. It lifts my early morning spirits in a way that nothing else could. I cannot believe I have managed to miss it, every day for the last however many years. Admittedly, a station platform is not like a shopping centre. You don't wander up and down it looking at people and shop windows. It is completely functional. You go to a platform in order to leave it, ideally as soon as possible. Most days I gallop across it, if the train is already there and the doors are open. Now, every working day, I arrive a couple of minutes earlier, so that I can head over to the garden and take in this feast for the eyes. It reeks of nostalgia. It conjurs Frances Hodgson Burnett (of The Secret Garden fame, for you philistine non readers of brilliant retro childrens fiction). It reminds me of a scene from The Railway Children. In short, for a few brief minutes it kids me that I am not on my way to join the hamster wheel that is the Career Superhighway. I might just as easily be a Land Girl, or on my way to sell produce at the nearest Farmers' market. As an exercise in feelgood deception it is a runaway winner. Every station should have one. The tube would be a lot happier place to be if they did.