I have spent the last few weeks trying to understand why one plant has occupied so much of my attention. When we first moved here, I decided the wolfsbane should go. It seemed the sensible thing to do. It is beautiful, but it is also one of Britain’s most
Gardening has its own dress code. There are many glamorous gardeners but I’m not one of them. I scrub up fairly well for a night out but my plants don’t care about dresses and mascara runs in rain and sweat. My gardening style is more decades old leggings
There is an old crab apple tree at Deer Abbey, in Aberdeenshire. If you look carefully, you can see how it started life being carefully trained against the stone-walled garden wall and then at some point, it just goes wild. The abbey itself survives mostly as foundations, now. Stones
Tomorrow, I turn fifty seven. I love birthdays. I love the messages arriving from different places and different chapters of life. Friends from Hampshire alongside friends from the Hebrides, and new friends. Colleagues from past projects alongside neighbours from this new corner of Aberdeenshire. People who would never otherwise meet
Under the Rose Growing up in Hampshire, I learned about the Hampshire Rose in primary school. I remember trying to draw it and getting it wrong. There was a correct arrangement of petals and gaps that I could never quite master. Somewhere there was supposed to be a petal where
The gooseberry bushes came with the cottage. There are about twenty five of them lining the fenced off section of the garden with their threatening thorns and generous intentions. First, I saw fruit, lots of fruit. More fruit than two people could possibly eat. Then, predictably, curiosity entered the chat.
The rhubarb patch was one of the first things my new neighbours warned me about, with amusement. Soon after I moved in, they gathered around me to share a photograph on a phone. The previous year’s rhubarb stood almost five feet tall, towering over the people holding it. It
I’ve been wondering what makes a weed a weed. Who decides? This week I made a cold infusion from cleavers, better known in the UK as sticky willy. Left overnight in water, it produced a surprisingly refreshing drink with delicate flavours of fresh peas and cucumber. Nettles have long
I have a honeysuckle growing outside my bathroom window. Maybe “growing” is too mild of a description. It has become an enormous presence, intertwined with a fuchsia and has advanced across the view so much that I can’t see out of the window at all. It flowers extravagantly and
I bought a medlar tree this week. I don’t have childhood memories of it aside from hearing about it in passing in old gardens or country estates. I have still never tasted one. Honestly, I bought it because I was curious. I’m just unappeasably interested in ancient flavours
I made a video for my little corner of the Gardenstead app last week, asking, “How can I own a tree?” I find it awe-inspiring that so many of the trees here are older than I am and will most likely still be here long after I am gone.
A month ago, we removed the wolfsbane from the front garden. Even writing that sentence feels slightly dramatic, as though I ought to have been wearing a cloak while thunder rolled overhead. In reality, I was mostly wearing gardening gloves and trying to stop the dog from enthusiastically “helping”. Dave