Paul McCartney credits George Harrison's love of gardening for one of the ways he stays connected to his late-bandmate. While chatting with NPR's All Things Considered, “Macca” spoke about the “Quiet” Beatle, recalling, “George was very into horticulture, a really good gardener, so he gave me a tree as a present. It's a big fir tree and it's by my gate. As I was leaving my house this morning, I get out of the car, close the gate and look up at the tree and say, 'Hti, George.' There he is, growing strongly. And y'know, that takes me back to the time when I hitchhiked with him! They're an ever-present presence, if that's a way to say.”
McCartney said that the gift has never been taken for granted — especially since Harrison's death nearly 20 years ago: “It's lovely. He gave it to me — I just planted it. But then, as the years go by, every time I look at it I go, ''That's the tree George gave me.' George has entered that tree, for me. I hope he's happy with that.”
George Harrison often played his favorite standards at home on the ukulele and was known to give ukuleles to his nearest and dearest friends so they too could plonk away at their leisure. In his live shows, Paul McCartney plays the uke that Harrison sent to him a number of years ago during his current performances of Harrison's Abbey Road classic, “Something”: “It was a Christmas gift. He sent it around, and it was a really nice ukulele — it's a very good one, it says on top 'The Gibson.' So, it's just really cool, y'know, it was a gift. And I've always loved it. Y'know, I had one myself, I have a Martin, actually they make a nice little ukulele, which I, in the early days on the album Ram, one of my first sort of albums after the Beatles, I did 'Ram On' on there, and so that was my little one I used to carry around. But this one's special, so I brought it on tour and I do the tribute to George with it.”
