Laycock

In the novel The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side, old Laycock is a gardener. He comes to Danemead three times a week to help Miss Marple with her garden. His work is not up to Miss Marple's standard, but she is sure he does his best.

Miss Marple knew exactly what she wanted done, and when she wanted it done, and would instruct Laycock accordingly. Laycock would then display "his particular genius which was that of enthusiastic agreement and subsequent lack of performance".

Laycock always gives reasonable excuses, frequently about the weather, or else something of great importance that had to be attended to first, usually to do with cabbages and brussels sprouts, which he liked to grow in large quantities.

Laycock's own principles of gardening include numerous cups of tea, sweet ad strong, as an encouragement to effort, a good deal of sweeping up of leaves in autumn, and a certain amount of bedding out of his own favourite plants, mainly asters and salvias. He is in favour of syringeing roses for green-fly, but is slow to get around to it, and when asked to do deep trenching for sweet peas, counters with the remark that his own sweet peas were a "proper treat last year, and no fancy stuff done beforehand".

Laycock is attached to his employers, and humours their fancies in horticulture, as long as no hard work is involved. He believes in growing vegetable, and feels that flowers are fancy things that ladies like to grow because they have nothing better to do with their time. However, he shows his affection for the ladies who employ him by growing asters, salvias, lobelia edging and summer chrysanthemums.