No more. I *love* my garden. It's where I have my most peaceful, most spiritual moments, watching a tree creeper or following small blue butterflies bumbling in the hedges. I'm excited to see the pyramidal orchids again next month, and I love that most of my flowers planted themselves. 3/4
I rail all the time to anyone who will listen about how damaging for nature traditional gardens can be: the bowling green lawns, clipped sterile shrubs and stand-to-attention colour-matched perennials. Yet here I am making excuses for why my own garden doesn't match that model. 2/4
Peak crabapple blossom and Clematis montana going 9n in my front garden right now 💚💚💚 best display for years #gardening 🌱 #flowers #bloomscrolling
If visitors find my garden "messy", if they're surprised a professional gardener can have a garden "like that", if they see nettles brambles & hogweed and think "weeds", their problem. My garden, my choices, my decision to invite nature in.
I *love* my garden & I need to remember that. #gardening 🌱
I planted this tree as a tiny whippy thing late one winter with my youngest daughter, then a teenager; we chose it together because she wanted a blossom tree. Now it fills the hillside with clouds of flowers. My daughter is now 24; every time I see it I think of her & smile 💚 #gardening #memories 🌱
Spotted out in the wild 😊 this was a fun book to write for the RHS, packed with tips & ideas for more sustainable ways to grow your own food 💚 www.waterstones.com/book/rhs-can... #gardening 🌱
I caught myself apologising for my garden again yesterday.
Then I thought: what are you doing?
You have a garden sparkling with flowers: buttercups, cow parsley, campion and dandelions.
It's jam packed with butterflies, birds, and bees: it would have none of these without the nettles & brambles. 1/4
When rhubarb flowers it's pretty - but also a sign of stress. The trick is to work out why... usually it's overcrowding (lift & divide clumps every 5 years then replant in a new spot to keep healthy). But this one just hasn't thrived so I dug it up - turns out the roots were rotting 🥺 #gardening 🌱
If you have baby figs on your tree congratulations - you'll have a crop of ripe fruit this year (as long as there's no late frost) 💚 figs in the UK rely on embryonic fruits formed late the previous year to overwinter, so don't remove them if you're pruning #gardening 🌱
There is no politician - and I mean none - who is better-placed than Ed Miliband to get us through this fossil fuel-driven energy crisis.
No-one in politics understands the energy system better. That’s why the billionaire fossil press hate him
www.theguardian.com/business/202...
As fossil fuel prices soar ‘the era of clean energy security must come of age’, energy secretary will say
