Wendy is my Inspiration.  She lent me a book on the Findhorn Foundation which I found very New Agey (communing with plants!  I only knew that as a flowery metaphor). But later I  stayed at the Findhorn Foundation for a couple of nights, and took part in a wonderful tribal circle dance in the hall.  A meditation room was roofed in heather, but I found it very difficult to even slightly loosen the cold grip of rationality I had been brought up in. Then Wendy started a meditation  group and invited me to join.  The others were far more spiritual (or away with the fairies) than me and still are. ...

    JANUARY Acanthus, I planted 2 from RHS under the gleditsia, having seen them do well in shade in Winchester. In March, find label Acanthus Tasmanian Angel, all variegated & spotty sickly – ugh! But is it them?   (August, and both doing ok and not variegated, and one has had a tall beautiful flowers) MARCH 25 Gladioli from Jane Fuest. Planted them in pot to see how they do and, that way, I have more control over them – slugs, weeds, watering etc. Jane’s are in pots. Varieties: Given names seem completely wrong.  Wine and Roses ‘soft pink & red blotch’. never...

Good to be here again, in spite of the howl of the A 14, with all these experts and all the veg and flowers bursting from the sandy soil. Never seen such runner bean flowers, a perfect peachy pink, grown over wigwams.  Named Celebration.  I’ll grow them here, allowing them to ramble over shrubs and pick them when I felt like it. All forms and colours of dahlias, but I am not keen on pompon, ball, waterlily, anemone or cactus types – they attract no insects, no bees, and would be like Essex bling in my garden which gets wilder by the day.  So, my best dahlia the single Happy Days,...

Flaubert said, to make anything interesting, you simply have to look at it long enough.   I never thought much about lobelias – I like them in summer flowing out of their pots, a cheery background to all the rest of the garden.  I buy em in and pull em out, summer and autumn – annuals are lightweights, not stayers. Then out of their hundreds of tiny blue flowers I looked at one. It had a face – slanting white eyebrows and black mouth with a droopy three pronged white beard to summon insects in, and I had never noticed. The platycodons are flowering, and I wait as the bud...