In subconscious recognition of this, I booked into Fowlescombe Farm, the day after solstice, for 24 hours of solo decompression. An impeccably designed farm-hotel that does that clever trick of making you feel more glam and well-dressed from the moment you walk in. Muted, calm, lots of textiles you want to stroke and books you want to spend an afternoon and a cocktail or two with. The rooms are impossibly generous with killer views down the valley, a heaving vase of hand-picked flowers from the farm, and deep proper sofas to enjoy both from. But as much as a 24 hours holed up with room service was tempting (and I would def be delighted to be tucked up in there for a winter weekend), it was high summer and there were gardens to explore.

Fowlescombe was (and still is) a working farm, and now 10-bed hotel tucked into the folds of a deep Devon valley and led by the land in all that they do. Imaginative delicious food grown and reared largely from the farm or very nearby (I had Salcombe smokies for breakfast and an incredible umami tea made from vegetable cuttings), wonderful regenerative and organically farmed productive gardens, a killer greenhouse choc full of pellies and head gardener Shelley’s penchant for aeoniums, and the kind of cosy laid back service that makes you feel like you’re staying with friends who are just really great at hosting. Dinner (four courses) and lunch are included in the room rate because “we want you to feel looked after” founder Caitlin told me – and that you most certainly do.Activities on the farm are outdoorsy, which is how I like them. A walk around the farm on one of its many trails took me through woods, past ancient ruins and fields with nothing but skylarks chattering overhead and low grumble of a heatwave about to break. But the real treat was an hour spent with Shelley the head gardener who talked me through the plans for the garden -and the astonishing work they have done already in the last two short years since building work finished.

Shelley is like so many great gardeners – full of knowledge and experience but still very keen to point out she is still learning, which may be true but the garden would suggest she’s got quite a lot sorted already. The vegetable gardens are set across a hill which used to be an orchard, some of which was heavily compacted when the building work was going on. As such it’s been a slow process of coaxing it back to life, and beginning the process of establishing a new garden for a new era. Gone are the formal immaculate rows of crops side by side, instead it’s companion planting inspired by the likes of Joshua Sparkes and Martin Crawford, with plenty of permaculture and food forestry principles woven in too. In one bed, Sichuan pepper provides a higher canopy and dappled shade for redcurrants to grow underneath with calendula at ground level. A Nepeta ‘lung’ runs through the garden to attract pollinators, and at the end of each row of crops a different flower shape is chosen to increase diversity. Perennial crops such as Jerusalem artichokes (which we had for supper) and Sea Kale are grown in abundance, and along the boundary a native hedge has been planted to attract the first early pollinators to pollinate the orchard – a trick Normandy farmers have been deploying for years. As you’d expect, the composting department is elaborate and enviable with experiments in bokashi taking place alongside seaweed and crushed scallop shells which are used to feed the soil.

The rest of the garden is more ornamental, but pleasingly restrained with fennel and (!) nettles left to romp among the daisies and the last of the foxgloves. It’s a garden that has been designed with not just humans in mind, and is a great example of how clean lines and considered design can be the corset that makes this kind of scheme feel intentional and understated. There was also a very lovely water feature designed by their landscaper Mark, and excellent outdoor furniture which I have spec’d in a few schemes but never seen en masse like this – it’s very nice.

All in all, it was exactly my kind of tonic – exceedingly treaty and lovely, but with much to learn and look at too. A place you feel good being at and want to spend more time in, and in a landscape that would be as enticing in October as it is now. I really must remember to do this more often.

Other things:

A great film about two boys I want my kids to be when they grow up – surf, sea and solitude

Books I have read / reread recently: James by Percival Everett – damning and brilliant satire, a new take on the tale of Huckleberry Finn told from Jim’s perspective. Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier – so atmospheric, name another book with a character as good as Manderlay

A tree I really have fallen for after seeing looking 10/10 in a project we planted 18 months ago.

An article I wrote for House & Garden about gardening with your kids – something I never thought I’d love. Highlights include Lara from Skool Beanz

I’m speaking at The Design Museum’s Summer Garden Salon next month - it’s a free event and there’s lots else happening

My stay at Fowelscombe was hosted, with no obligation to write anything – as someone who does not do this kind of thing often, I wouldn’t unless I really liked it and felt inspired by what they do. I did.

This year it feels like particularly so due to all sorts of things that I am so very lucky to have going on. It started in Brazil, a holiday that had been on the vision board for 5 years since it got cancelled in Covid. Finally my husband’s 40th provided the excuse we didn’t know we needed.

We had nearly three weeks away, an absurdly greedy and luxurious treat, and strangely discombobulating too– hadn’t done long haul for nearly 10 years and had completely forgotten the disorientation of jetlag, combined with the physical distance and visual whiplash of being in an unfamiliar filmset. According to vague alerts that occasionally surfaced on my phone, astronauts went to the dark side of the moon and Trump nearly obliterated the whole Iranian civilisation before unblocking and re-choking global energy supply. But (slightly shamefully) it barely registered - I was idling, ignoring, wilfully feeling dreamily detached. Because I was busy fawning over tropcialia and vines that jungle up trees and trees that heave with rude ripe fruits and lazy vultures that swirl overhead and that rhythmic circadian changing of the guard that starts at 6pm as the sun goes down . It was noisy and it was also blissfully quiet.

Brazil is a county that’s hard to grasp. Most obviously because of its size - hours in a car translates to pathetic millimetre on a map, compounded by the metronome of “are we nearly there yet?” the never-ending need for snacks which apparently remains as urgent on a different continent as it does here. Also not helped by our diabolical grasp of Portuguese that made parts of the experience feel frustratingly a bit like standing behind glass. But also because there are moments of legibility, or perhaps approximation - my mind lazily linking one tropical country to the other I spent six years in, although they are 11,000 miles apart. It’s a kind of muscle memory, or a sensory memory, a flicker of familiarity when a colour, a smell, a fruit share the same frame, and it feels like jigsaw pieces momentarily aligning. But it’s a mirage, because this was a new place that deserves a box that is not already labelled.

Anyway, this is not a travelogue, this was only to say being away made the arrival of Spring even more of a leap. When we left, the last dregs of winter were still swirling in the bucket, when we got back the world was new again. Hedges freshly fuzzed with green velvet, hedgerows a treasure trove of jewels, garden animated with a life force reminiscent of Toy Story. And then I went to Knepp.

No less than four days after saying goodbye to the sandy shores of North East Brazil I was dipping my toes into beaver-forged damns in the High Weald in Sussex. I was there to do an event and talk for the book, and it was my first time really exploring Knepp, having only been to the garden and I think it’s fair to say there was quite a lot of expectation. Well believe the hype.

I woke up early the morning after the event and took myself off for a walk. Mist was rolling off the lake, a dawn chorus to rival any jungle was in full swing, ancient oaks looked sagely on and I had that feeling again, a quasi-religious sense of total awe and wonder at the outrageous beauty of it all. Totally spellbinding, raucous yet so calm and how it’s meant to be. And that is what really got me, this is how it’s meant to be. We’re supposed to experience this all the time. It’s not meant to be a once in a lifetime deal, only experienced because it’s been fiercely protected from the ravaging forces of the ‘real world’. This should the real world, this is what our great-grandparents got on a regular basis. I felt a profound sense of loss.

But this is not a time to wallow. The world has changed yes, but it is shifting, and not all in the direction we think it is - and I write this on the day that Reform is winning seats all over the country. Tempting as the pull of despair is, it’s not the answer. And this was the key point in my talk at Knepp – being overwhelmed by a sense of loss or horror at where we are in the world is natural, it shows we care. But we can’t let it paralyse us, because doing so assumes the future is already written, that it’s a foregone conclusion - and it’s just not. Gardens, I learned in the course of writing the book, are one of the best tools we have for designing a future, they give us agency to write a version of the world we want to be in. So instead I came home, bought some swift boxes (WHERE ARE THEY THIS YEAR???) and committed to a quite intimidating text book on the Essentials of Ecology (WHERE ARE ALL THE SHORT COURSES ON ECOLOGY??). And so we go on.

“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.” Arundhati Roy

Other things:

The best books I read in Brazil (I read a lot)

• No Straight Road Takes You There, Rebecca Solnit, I hang on her every word and have sent to two friends, and much of my belief and hope in a better world I owe to her

• Mother Mary Comes to Me, Arundhati Roy, (read in one sitting, also highly recommended revisiting A God of Small Things when you’re done)

• Flesh, David Sazlay – dazzling, I have already written the film in my head

• The Wager, David Gran – prize for the book I least expected to read but was hands down the one I banged on about the most. Gobsmacking.

• The Correspondent, Virginia Evans

• The Trees, Percival Everett

I am getting sick of talking about myself but I should probably tell people who live in London that I am talking at Brockwell Park next week with friend, client and FT House & Home editor Lauren Indvik. Come.

If you are following American politics with your hands over your face and you’re into snappy, acerbic and extremely dry, wry and (out)rageous writing that keeps your sanity in the air, Tina Brown’s substack is a must

Have you got at least one NGS garden visit in your diary this year? I always miss them by mistake. Don’t be me.

Gardens That Can Save The World, my book about gardens and the hope and goodness they can deliver was published last week. Hurrah! Often these milestones don’t feel as good as you think they’re going to, they arrive weighed down with expectation and then evaporate before you can enjoy them, like a guest leaving a party without saying goodbye. But I am delighted to report this one was not one of those.

We had a little party at Daunt books, the book was (thrillingly) in the window, friends, clients and work friends came, and I said a speech which I actually quite enjoyed and it was great - great to celebrate, great to come to the end of a project that’s been haunting the back of my mind for three years, and great to be able to share the brilliant people and stories I found when writing it. And while there is plenty more to come in terms of events and the never-ending promo (details below) it has left a small window of time in its wake, a small writing-and-thinking-shaped hole which I intend to fill by restarting this.

This, much like before, is going to be my repository for good things I have found - ideas and stories that have direct or often only tangential connections to plants, gardens, ecology and design, things that deliver goodness, beauty and inspiration, often all three. I had to pause, because it seems, there are only so many words I can squeeze out in a month.

Eighteen months ago when I was writing the book, I remember feeling incredibly impatient that it was going to take so long to be out in the world because the stories felt so urgent, so topical to what was going on at the time. Sadly, as it turns out, this is more the case now than then. I am not going to list the ways in which the world has teetered further off its axis, but what is clear, is that hope is in short supply which is incidentally, what the book delivered to me in fresh steaming spadefuls. It revealed to me beyond all doubt that the world a good place, full of good people doing great things and this has a powerful effect on how you view the world. For me, it has been quietly life-changing. Hope is a discipline (a brilliant phrase coined by Mariame Kabe) and one, like my weights (bc I’m 40 and the internet shouted enough at me for long enough) I will be sticking to. The fruits of all this hunting around for hope will be laid out on a platter for you here.

Tulipa turkestanica is my first offering. It appeared this week in the garden and as with all the spring bulbs, there is something of a miracle about it. It is also proof of my thesis on when you become a plant grown up – like olives, capers, anchovies, you only really develop a taste for the sophisticated and true once you’re out of the fishfinger years. The species, untainted by human hand, (which is greedy for lucrative cross breeds and distracting accoutrements like ruffles and doubles and that attract people not insects), is the simplest form. It’s the genuine article, the OG, but it’s only once you’ve had your fill at the pick n mix ice cream sundae that you come round to appreciating the simple beauty of a perfect scoop of vanilla. And the other lovely thing about them which you only discover when you have them in your own garden is that they open and close like little ballerinas performing an exquisitely timed show each day - and that when closed they’re even more gorgeous.

Reading and listening - I have so much to catch you all up on, but I will pace myself. Best quick read recently is the aptly titled Despite It All, A Handbook for Climate Hopefuls by Fred Pearce who has an extremely reassuring number of years of environmental journalism under his belt (40). This not only lends the book genuine heft, but also allows the kind of perspective required if you’re going to say anything useful or insightful about climate change and the environment. Pearce recounts attending an early iteration of COP in Mexico City in 1984 centred on population control, which he cites as one of our big wins - while it might not feel it, globally we are nearly peak population. With this comes all sorts of associated benefits, not least consumption. “According to the U.K.’s Office for National Statistics, Britain’s consumption of materials peaked in 2001 … that is even after allowing for the materials footprint of imported goods”. Hard to believe in a world dominated by Shein and same day delivery, but the thorough analysis of the stats (by Pearce not me) reveal that tide is turning.

A news story that I very much enjoyed recently, so much so that I tried to persuade my husband to stop the business he started three years ago and embark on a 180 pivot to support it (he didn’t). But proof that there are solutions out there, workable, scalable ones that could make vast messy problems a thing of the past within a decade.

A recipe that is very un-me but has promoted silken tofu to a regular buy. Make it thicker for a dip or thinner for a dressing and slosh on everything ( the NYT subscription is one of my new fave subs – operating a one in one out policy on paid subscriptions this year, and the food app alone is worth it. And the Connections game. IYKYK).

Another beneficiary of the O.I.O.O. policy is Noble Rot Magazine - excellent writers, unshackled by the editorial guidelines of mainstream media (I’m not a conspiracy theorist), free to be irreverent, naughty, and often pissed, which works because they know their onions (whilst importantly not giving a tomato). Guest writers like Kiera Knightley talk us through her most memorable dish (it was fishy, messy and included q a lot of lip licking) and Zadie Smith describing her perfect meal (oysters, a martini and steak tartare, predictably cool), plus John Niven as the sardonic agony uncle. A thoroughly good way to spend a Friday evening.

Other things (me me me):

Two very generous write-ups about the book (1, 2) and one that I wrote for the FT about my professional crush Terremoto.

I’m talking at Knepp on 23^rd April about the book and what it taught me, with Isabella Tree. It includes drinks, a Q&A and dinner at their Michelin Guide listed Wilding Restaurant. Please come and join so I don’t feel like a lemon.

And if you’re south-west based, I am also talking at Levels Live in Langport Somerset on April 30^th 6.30pm, which is an event series run by the brilliant Decca Lang who is also the mastermind behind the magical Craftsman’s Cabin.

Given that we’re in peak habit-starting season, I am going to get back on the Substack horse. It turns out writing is just like any other habit – when you’re in it, you can’t imagine a version of you that doesn’t ___ (insert preferred smug resolution – going to the gym, not eating sugar etc etc). But as soon as you stop, you’re screwed. Getting back on the horse is infinitely harder than leaping off. I am going to offer an excuse of sorts here, which is that my reason for pausing was because I was writing a book, in fact I still am. And it all felt too much on top of the day job, and home job and in lots of ways it still does. But dropping the ball entirely is not the answer because you then feel terrible about not doing what you said you would, and getting back on becomes an intimidating point of pride as well as whatever time-related issue you were wrestling with before. It’s also unimaginative. On or off / all or nothing, when actually there’s a million different versions of that thing you could do that require less time but still honour that original intention.

So in that vein, I am going to start writing this again but get a bit less prescriptive about what that might be. It could just be an inspired quote, something I’ve read or a brilliant person I’ve spoken to (and luckily for you I’m coming across quite a lot of those at the moment in the researching of said book). And sometimes I might find myself desperate to write 1000 words about dandelions or the best seaweed to eat. This strategy also applies to all other resolutions – a little bit of flex might make them last longer.

For me this year it’s more adventure both garden-based and otherwise, more physical strength (Toes To Bar IYKYK), even fewer new clothes (a successful roll on from last year, thank you Vinted), even more boundaries on social media (AppBlock is a depressingly but now necessary addition to my subscription list - actually edit the subscription list is a good one). Less sugar and more saying yes to my kids, although not about sugar. Doing more stuff with my hands and encouraging kids to do that too – I have a very slow embroidery on the go which is the perfect level of attention/distraction to get lost in an audiobook - famously gardening strikes a very similar balance. On that, I am also going to finish our garden at home. In fact a man with Size 15 feet is arriving tomorrow morning with a digger to start carving some structure out of the swamp. And be less intimidated by writing this. We’re off!

Other great lists I have read this week (is the best thing about new year’s resolutions reading other peoples?

Clover Stroud’s list to feel more present in 2015

This Plate Will Save Your Life on debunking the insanity of diet culture in peak frenzy season

A brilliant essay on not making big decisions but really rolling with them when they’re made for you by Katherine Omerod

A GREAT way to start a new habit with your hands – 30 days of drawing

Read more

The first of these is Sissinghurst, which totally blew my socks off, quite something for a garden as famed as this. For despite its superstar status, it’s an intensely personal and intimate place, it feels like rifling through someone’s knicker drawer. It’s both a portrait of a marriage - an unconventional but enduring one - and also a selfie in garden format, a mirror of the maker. This is all deeply unfashionable these days - it’s got to look uncontrived, like nature intended – the no make-up look that we all know requires quite a lot of skill and intervention. But this is not that. This is gardening for pleasure writ large. And pleasure was so much of Vita’s life –  her well-documented affairs, her love of the arts, her poetry all speak to a vitality and greedy thirst for beauty that is impossible to ignore at Sissinghurst. You get a real sense of screw it, I’ll do as I please thanks very much, this is what brings me joy - and its wholly refreshing, like walking through someone else’s uninhibited fantasy. And also indulgent, unashamedly so – a whole garden room to express a colour palette, areas that celebrate different seasons, the time to linger and devote your days to the garden and your evenings to letters to lovers. What a rare treat.

The next was Charleston, a garden which Vita would have spent plenty of time in canoodling with lover Virginia Woolf and perhaps swapping seedlings and idly helping out with a bit of weeding on a sunny afternoon. It’s a garden that is famed more for the people that spent time there, than horticultural prowess. Not that it’s not gorgeous, in that charming, and very British slightly dishevelled way. Hollyhocks sway drunkenly over beds of cottagey faves in an accidental dolly mixture of colours, all enclosed in comforting knapped flint walls, which do a great job of blocking out the reality of the Big Wide World – now as much as then.

I was there for the Festival of the Garden, a yearly event that pulls a stellar crowd of speakers and guests. Among others, a personal design hero of mine Jinny Blom talked about how she conjures landscapes into existence and her very intuitive (and enviable) approach to creating gardens. Again, the tussle between intervening or not arose – we’re all so rapt by the idea of letting go, not interfering, allowing nature to do Her thing. And as wonderful as Her thing is, a garden by very definition is a place that has been created – out of love and passion for a place, a moment in history, an obsession (ahem, Sissinghurst). And there is zero shame in this because gardening for beauty and aesthetic gratification is entirely compatible, both ethically and ecologically, with nature. We don’t need to choose one or the other, we can absolutely have both – and we should be grabbing opportunities to indulge in, explore and create beautiful places as much as we can. They’re vital. Vital expressions of our humanity, vital in delivering joy and keeping us sane in a mad, bad and confusing world. We should all plant and garden in a way that allows for pleasure, in a way that pleases us – not according to the diktat of the day – and chances are, the rest will follow (unless pleasing you means Astroturf).

The world doesn’t need another rant on why we need beauty, and frankly it’s obvious. But it was very good to feel it in those gardens, and to feel it in sufficient intensity that it was able to puncture the heavy fog of existential doom that’s been following me around like a bad smell for months. Pleasure is a great thing, and so is its sister, leisure. Let’s all lean into that for a bit, might do us all some good. See you in September.

As the die-hard among you will know, plants and gardens are a gateway drug for me - a portal that leads to other worlds, people and ideas. And I’ve always thought they’re very autobiographical too – we all have plants we hold a candle to, landscapes that make our hearts swell and green spaces we visit in our dreams and imaginations.

I can’t think of a better person to illustrate this than Clover Stroud. Clover is no stranger to dreams and imagination, and also completely fearless in exploring her own biography with extraordinary honesty. Clover has crafted a unique style of memoir which is both intensely intimate but also universal, celebrating the mundane and the sublime, the very extraordinariness of ordinary life – motherhood, grief, parenting, loss, friendships, domesticity. In her latest book, The Giant on the Skyline, the concept of home and belonging comes under Clover’s deliciously candid and technicolour gaze, inspired by her recent move from a landscape she feels intrinsically a part of, to the swampy alien contours of Washington DC.  Thank you so much Clover.

If you’re not already familiar with Clover’s writing, go find it and add to your summer reading list immediately. She also writes a weekly newsletter On The Way Life Feels, on Substack

LD: What’s your relationship to plants?

CS: I cannot grow plants at all and I am terrible at gardening. I tried a bit during the start of lockdown and had fantasies about being someone who knew how to pot out seedlings and grow chrysanthemums, but I am too impatient and messy to be good at gardening I think. A year ago I moved from my home I deeply love, in south Oxfordshire, to Washington DC. I came here for my husband’s work; three of my children are at state school here in Washington, but my elder two children are at university in England. I miss them a lot, and quite often I come back to England for my work, and I always see them.

Something I’ve especially loved about being in England has been seeing the very seasonal plants, like bluebells, snow drops or cow parsley, which I miss in DC. I am also fascinated by the plants here: the plants that grow on the streets near our house in the northwest of the city are huge, and quite tropical looking. Obviously I can’t tell you what they are as I am no gardener, but I know they make me feel curious. 

LD: Is there a plant-moment in the year that you look forward to?

CS: I love April, when the cherry blossom comes out. It’s my birthday in mid-April, and some of my earliest memories was of blowing out candles on a chocolate biscuit cake my mum always made for me, underneath the spreading branches of a big cherry tree in the middle of our garden. I love the frothy, blousy pinkness of cherry blossom, its unashamed blousiness. Cherry blossom also marks the end of the winter - cherry blossom in the start of spring, that must be one of the best moments in the year, isn’t it? 

LD: Tell me about a plant you remember from childhood?

CS: I was about thirteen, and I didn’t want to go to school. I never really wanted to go to school, honestly. I always wanted to be at home, with my mum, even when I was a teenager. But I remember forcing myself to go to school, and when I came home, Mum had put some primroses and a jasmine plant into a bowl and left them in my bedroom. It was such a beautiful, gentle thing to do, and whenever I see jasmine, I remember that feeling, of returning to my home, my bedroom, the relief of it, and then the sweet smell of jasmine. 

LD: What plants evoke a special memory?

CS: I really love fritillaries. They are such incredible flowers. Mum used to take my sister Nell and me to a wildflower meadow near our home when we were very small, to see the fritillaries growing there, a purple haze over the green pasture. When I see those incredible purple flowers, I always think of Mum, and my sister, Nell, too, as both of them are dead. Those flowers make me feel incredibly sad, and also happy, relieved even, at the same time. 

LD: What plant makes you think of home?

CS: Hyacinths, in bowls, on the kitchen table, surrounded by the mess of cereal packets and Lego, make me think of home. 

LD: Is there a landscape or green space that you pine for or that you feel particularly connected to? 

CS: I feel a powerful connection to the landscape of south Oxfordshire and into Wiltshire, where the chalk hills are crossed by the ancient track called the Ridgeway. It’s an intensely human landscape, with standing stones and the white chalk horse at Uffington. This landscape is in my heart, and it’s the landscape I long to return to. That longing for home was the reason I wrote my fourth memoir, The Giant on the Skyline, which is all about home and what it means, whether it’s a physical place, a memory, or our relationship with other people.

LD: What plants or green places make you feel alive?

CS: The Ridgeway, unquestionably. It was such an honour, really, to immerse myself in that landscape to write about it in The Giant on the Skyline. I feel I know it really well; I feel it knows me, too.

LD: What plants do you love cooking with?

CS: I love dill! One of the things I really love about Washington DC is that I can buy massive bunches of dill in my local supermarket. I spent quite a lot of time in the Caucasus mountains in my early thirties, which I wrote about in my first book, The Wild Other. It was an incredible, deeply felt and occasionally perilous time, and dill is the taste I associate most clearly with that time. Dill, and tobacco and vodka. 

LD: What plants do you love the smell of?

CS: I love the smell of geraniums. I think geranium oil is so lovely to have in a bath. I also love rosemary. When my eldest son, who is now 23, was born, someone gave me a bottle of rosemary essential oil. I sprinkled it in his cot and had lots of rosemary baths. That smell reminds me of being a new mother, in my early twenties, more than any other, and that was a very beautiful time.

LD: Is there a plant that has played a significant role in your work?

CS: Well it doesn’t go over my head that my name is Clover. And I write highly confessional books about all the stuff that’s happened to me. So I guess you could say that Clovers have played a significant role in my work? Would that count?

What plants are you currently growing? 

CS: One day when I’m grown up I’d like to grow some plants. Any plants, I don’t really mind what kind. I’d just like to be able to garden. But my youngest child is only 7. I have five children and I know how much nurturing they need. It’s a while away, as my kids need my attention, but one day, I’ll grow something. I just haven’t figured out what quite yet.

Concrete is the second most-used substance in the world after water. For lots of us, the world is predominantly grey, and of course the grey-green ratio runs in depressing parallel along socio-economic lines. Redressing this balance should be right up there on our list of priorities because the evidence is plentiful and inarguable – access to green spaces is better for kids and their development, for our physical health and mental wellbeing, as well as good for the planet. And it’s not expensive. I think the term for that is a total no brainer. Yet it is painfully slow in coming, at least from the top. But luckily there are lots of people trying do it from the bottom up. I’m in the midst of some research for a big project, which has happily lead me to lots of these people. Small business, gardeners, and designers who are cramming plants in to every available nook and cranny, reimagining cities with green ribbons running through them, designing buildings where the outside space is given as much credence at the inside.

But it’s not just the plants – the hard materials need a radical rethink too. The tonnes of concrete, the virgin materials that are mined in one corner of the world and shipped to another for a G&T terrace outside the back door. These are the bits that have a massive cost and it’s really quite hard to work around them. We all say we like reusing reclaimed materials, but the truth is that it’s tricky. It takes longer, requires more skill and costs the client (or the business) more. It’s also hard to make reused materials live up to our high aesthetic standards – palette furniture is great but it’s not everyone’s idea of a chic solution.

But it feels like the tide is changing – Ula Maria’s Best in Show garden at this year’s Chelsea has a vast wall of reclaimed materials that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a gallery. Another garden at Chelsea this year was made entirely from old Chelsea gardens. I spoke to a design studio in the US this week, whose USP is reusing materials, and they have spent 10 years developing their craft. Old concrete is precision cut into slabs to reveal terrazzo style edges, and vast jigsaw mosaic terraces are created from waste materials.

But although there are some people doing it brilliantly, it’s still not the norm. It’s far too easy to just click on the standard option – much like it’s too easy to get new fashion delivered to the door, rather than rifle through a gazillion second hand options. (Although Vinted has changed that marketplace, so could someone please come up with a way of doing it for materials too?) A friend who studied at Central St Martins said that for one term, they were not allowed to buy any new materials – paints, pencils, canvas, everything had to be reused or made. And as a result of this constraint, creativity blossomed – they all discovered new mediums and methods they would never have done if they’d been able to go to a shop. But this is the problem, most of us don’t have the freedom or time to play and experiment with materials. We’re all on a such a timeline, working to schedules and budgets that totally stifle any opportunities for innovating. And there’s so much cost attached to this – creatively and environmentally.  

So in short, we (I) have got to try harder - to do the leg work to find the better materials, to think a bit more creatively about what we can do with them, and make it the status quo not the exception. Make more room for play. I make this promise to myself about three times a year and it inevitably gets squeezed out as projects back up. So this is the public version of that. In the meantime, I’m off to live this promise in some fields in Glastonbury - a five-day celebration of play in all its shameless hedonistic glory. Out of office is on.

It is of course not without issues – the environmental impact of putting on such a show, the exclusivity of the event, the colossal amount of cash required to fund a garden. These are valid, and efforts are being made to address them all. But I’m not going to dwell on these now, because I think it’s also important that there’s a space where gardens celebrated and enjoyed without limitation (more on this below).

It's also a great learning opportunity, and I obsessively collect Chelsea planting lists and make notes of combos, materials and ideas that have caught my eye. And there’s always a few other gems I pick up along the way…

The first of which is Hosta mayo . You might well ask… not entirely useful unless you’re planning on doing a show garden sometime soon, but if you want shiny Hosta leaves, mix mayo and water in a squeezy bottle and wipe onto the leaves with a cotton wool pad as if removing makeup. Yes really.

Shrubs are back. I mean they never really left, but they have definitely felt like a slightly dated bathroom suite over the last few years, but Tom Stuart Smith’s Rhodedendron Davisiis soon put paid to that. Shamelessly blousy, they were the stars of his woodland edge planting, and as such are back on the map. Other notable faves were Katherine Holland’s delicious Calycanthus floridus and the burnt orange of Cytisus ‘Lena’ in Miria Harri’s Stroke Association garden.

Texture texture texture. The container and balcony gardens this year were incredible and proved a lot of magic can be conjured in a small space. The answer is layering textures – both materials and plants. Layers of planting heights and leaf shapes in a limited colour palette create a sense of immersion. Ula Maria is a designer I always associate with amazing textures and her Best in Show garden demonstrated this in spades – the knapped flint wall, the mixed materials wall which came alive when the light fell on it. The paths were a mix of pavers smooth blocks and gravel in a unifying colour. Combined it created an incredibly rich space.  

The royals have star power. Monday at Chelsea is total madness – the gardens open to the press and those lucky enough to get the call up from the RHS. The result is an extremely high celebrity per capita ratio and a sense of frenzy I reckon the Met Gala would bristle at. But at 3.30pm, the majority of guests leave and the bomb squad does the rounds in preparation for the royal visit. A hallowed hush falls over the site as the royal party makes their way up Main Avenue. No matter how decorated a designer you are, how glitzy a celeb, or your views on the monarchy, star-struck wonderment comes for everyone when the King and Queen are in your midst.

Last but not least, gardens tell stories. I have long been banging this drum and its something I work hard to ensure all my work does, and this year I really felt it. Gardens are an extremely powerful resource – they tell stories about the people who created them, the place they’re in, the role they’re performing – of which there are dozens. They can build communities, feed people, bring joy, hold space for those in times of grief. They can conserve water, be designed to prevent drought, increase biodiversity, restore lost habitats. They’re wonderful, powerful places, every green space counts and we should work hard to celebrate them and ensure everyone has access to them. Amen.

Only a few days before we’d got home from the bank holiday to find our hall swimming in two inches of rainwater, the last hurrah from a winter characterised by deluges of rain, and suffering. It had felt like the world was shifting irretrievably in a direction from which we had no road back.  And so when the May of our imagination arrived, it was like a faith restored, the relief was palpable. It’s ok she said, the world is still as you remember it. How could you have ever doubted me?

One of my favourite Mary Oliver poems (there are a few) is Don’t Hesitate. She talks about the hesitation and resistance we can feel in the face of unexpected, uncorrupted joy.  Is it real? Are we allowed to feel good, when the world is so bad? How long will it last this time? It’s a weird quirk of the human condition that the thing that we hunger for can feel so uncomfortable on arrival.

This is what May felt like last Friday. Its sheer resounding beauty totally eclipsed the spectre of doom that had loomed long over the last few months.  War, suffering, climate collapse, and the fall out of climate collapse arriving weekly on my hall floor. But elation at the respite from the gloom was swiftly followed by guilt, confusion, disorientation. How do these worlds marry up? Is my pink sky the same sky that rains aid parcels and bombs? Did the aurora bloom there too?

But as Mary reassuringly reminds us, the answer is, it doesn’t matter - life contains it all. There’s as much joy as there is misery, the trick is to not be afraid of either. If a perfect May day arrives we must “not be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not meant to be a crumb.” Which I interpreted to mean crack open the rosé and enjoy it while it lasts.

More joy that is not meant to be a crumb:

My new fave niche Instagram account.

Rebecca McMackin’s TED talk on conjuring edens out of waste

Olivia Laing’s book – all of it, from the 10/10 cover and title to the extraordinary way her brilliant mind so deftly unites people and ideas across continents and centuries

The biggest joy you can possible give yourself

An SPF 30 lip balm that doesn’t feel / taste / look gross and I wouldn’t be without – and I have tried THEM ALL

The first garden is one close to my heart. It belongs to a basement flat in Shepherd’s Bush, which over the years has been a steadfast companion to various family milestones – I met my now husband while living there, it was where my brother and his wife had their first child and now my Mum is having a year enjoying city life before moving west. For all of us it has been a everything a small London garden should be – somewhere that feels like a secret world and although entirely unfussy, a total luxury that you would have no idea existed from the outside.

If I close my eyes I can hear being in that garden – the shift from streetside to garden-side, where horns fade and the gentle chatter of neighbours hovers in the air. It’s walled, has a wisteria, currently flowering, planted by my brother 5 years ago, and a carpet of scented jasmine around the kitchen doors. A couple of steps up to a higher level act as focal point, doubling as perfect perch for a glass of wine / cup of tea. A jumble of pots and planters, currently tended by my doting mother play host to tulips (fading), alliums (starting), geums (blazing) and among other things, a selection of herbs that would make Raymond Blanc blush. Being in it is like being under the duvet and listening to the rain -  you can hear the world but it’s at a safe distance.

The second is a garden in California, belonging to poet and naturist Barbara Chung. A burgeoning obsession with native plants, and just a balcony to play with she was undeterred by those who warned that natives need their roots in the ground. With just a few pots on her balcony she’s created a thriving eco-system thrumming with life – and even host to a nesting hummingbird. In a modest muddle  of containers she has created a habitat that far outweighs the sum of its parts. And in doing so proved naysayers wrong, and that creating a garden is not just the preserve of the privileged or the rural.   “The underlying assumption was you have to have ground in order to have native plants, and in a place like L.A., to have ground you have to have privilege. I’m not begrudging people with privilege, but most people don’t live like that in L.A. or most other urban centers. It just felt morally wrong to me that you have to have land to have these plants. So I thought, ‘I’m going to figure this out.’”

I found the third while cavorting around Taipei (sadly online) - Taiwan it turns out, has a buzzing permaculture scene. The ‘Green City’ Program, which really started to gain traction post covid, is a new type of urban farming that puts hundreds of small edible green spaces into densely built-up areas to provide horticultural therapy, recreational opportunities, environmental education and a host of social benefits through engaging citizens in food cultivation. Over five years, a mosaic of 733 gardens covering 17 hectares of land across Taipei have emerged. 30% of these are “Happy Gardens”, which use “disused public lands for engaging local communities to plant vegetables and to maintain the site”. I came across one of these on a local blog - a slither of land underneath a motorway, beside a high rise, a group of Taiwanese urban growers have conjured a tropical farm growing radishes, mustard leaf, herbs and fruit.

It is a scene replicated all over Taiwan – and the world. Gardening (guerrilla or otherwise) happens in every country on earth, and in all shapes and sizes.  Often the size is small – land ownership and cultivating of ornamental gardens by definition, being the pursuits of the very lucky few. For the millions living in cities, the need to be with plants, to grow and tinker and potter is enduring – we need it, and as happened in Taipei, it took a global pandemic to realise how much. It’s an extremely soothing and reassuring thought, thinking of the millions of happy gardens around the world – pockets of green plugging the holes, literal and metaphorical, in urban life and reminding us that when it comes to gardens, good things often come in small packages.

Other good green things this week:

Rhubarb Kombucha, because there’s nothing that can’t be rhubarb-ed right now, and that’s absolutely fine with me

An essay about trees and Palestine that I found via Radicle, a great Substack

A delicious Spring Panzanella

Why do I love these really quite ugly and incredibly expensive trainers so much?  Is it because they have ‘flower’ in their name?

A bulb I am planting now for autumn

And this isn’t a link but was just so good I have to share it – when in Taiwan I read about a tree planting scheme called “Travel with a Tree”. They handed out native samplings in carrier bags at train stations, and people simply took one on their journey and planted it on arrival at their destination. One of the best things I have ever heard.

Happy weekend.

In my fragile post-winter state, I’m grateful for pretty much any sign that the season has shifted, but there are some plants that really deliver a very generous bang for spring buck. I include them again and again in projects and have them all in my garden at home. If your garden is feeling a little, how do I put this, um… lacklustre? now is a good time to spot gaps and shop for next year.

In at number 1: Euphorbia. My love for Euphorbia is well-documented, and no matter the Marmite-style reactions it can induce in clients, I bat devotedly for team love. Hard to beat the ubiquitous E. characias subsp. Wulfenii, (try also E. characias subsp. Humpty Dumpty if you want something a little more diminutive) but other Euphorbias are available – E. mellifera a winner.

2. Hellebores – long flowering and despite their slightly sullen downturned faces, really rather beautiful if not cheery. I love the sultry dark varieties for extra gothic drama, (try Helleborus × hybridus' Harvington Shades of the Night’ or Helleborus × hybridus' Harvington Red for more bitten lip than black eye). I’m also a big fan of the Corsican hellebore, Hellebore argutifolius – a different beauty, coarser and more robust, with spiny foliage and flowers the colour of Granny Smiths. It can get out of hand if happy, (can’t we all), so keep in check. All like shade / part shade, and good to have near the house because they’re in flower when you’re huddled in the kitchen not strolling round the further reaches of your garden.

3. Achillea. A bit of a wild card because consult any plant directory this would very much be considered a summer plant, but it’s got excellent foliage which is both fern-like and frondy as well as silvery and strokeable. Almost evergreen, the new growth is a satisfying hummock by this time of year, acting as a lovely low dumpy contrast in form to all the sharp tall verticals that this time of year is more obviously known for (eg alliums).

4. Tulips – can’t not mention tulips, even if they are a) obvious b) quite an expensive habit if you don’t opt for reliably perennial ones (jury still out on which, if any, are). If in doubt (and can afford) plant double the amount you think you need because more is more with tulips, squirrels often get there first and if for some reason you do find yourself in that very rare situation I have never come across of having too many tulips, you can pick them for the kitchen table. Or grow some specifically for this purpose.

5. Flowering quince – a bit of a one trick pony, but it’s a great trick. They work brilliantly trained up a wall. We inherited a shocking pink one that is just the right side of kitsch, but would be / is hard to pair with anything but white (I have some Libertia grandiflora under mine). I really love the lime green Chaenomeles speciosa ‘Kinshiden’, but it would be greedy to have two.

6. Fritilaria persica – bulb of the moment, everyone seems to have cottoned on to its not-so-subtle charms. My faves are  Fritillaria persica ‘Ivory Bells’  (lime seems to be a bit of a theme here) and its deep purple sister. They are not very reliable and not always perennial, but as the ad says, they’re worth it.

And whatever you do Forget-me-not. An excellent way of covering bare ground early in the season in a carpet of perfect innocent blue. I allow it to frolic about looking pretty and being adorable, doing a fine job of giving us something lovely to look at while the garden wakes up.

Three Substacks I heart

I have to admit that I was a little slow to fall for Substack. It felt like a whole new language I had to learn, another vortex that would drain me of precious time and energy, and I just didn’t know if I’d get the bug. But here I am, well and truly bitten. The things I found a bit irritating at first - its slightly clunky interface (at least when publishing if not when reading), the lack of customisation and design - I now love. It’s simple, unfussy and reminds me of the internet days of old, free from algorithms that rot your brain and dilute your taste, free from adverts that result in surprise packages of novel cleaning apparatus arriving unexpectedly because said ad caught you a vulnerable moment, usually 11pm in bed, and free from AI generated Asian children doing strange dances (just me?). There’s an innocence to it - it’s just words and a sometimes a few pics (although these are very much the garnish not the main event) and they’re direct from author to you, because you said yes please.

I love the worlds people are creating, their own magazines, where they don’t have to fit into moulds that traditional editors and publications require and it’s a joy to sit down and read pieces that haven’t been edited into a 200-word SEO optimised caption. I hope you are feeling that also.

Here are three I anticipate and savour:

Every Shade of Grey - quick off the mark, Katherine is a bit of a Substack OG these days, but remains supremely generous in her candour, humour and research. Navigating the juggle that is modern motherhood / career / relationships, and not letting the style side down, not even a millimetre, she is one of those women who you suspect has double the hours in the day in comparison to mere mortals, it’s now an essential part of my Sunday night.

Clover Stroud: On the Way Life Feels - I’ve long been a CS fangirl so when she recently started on Substack I was first through the door. Clover’s writing is totally without artifice, illuminating the hum drum corners of life with a ferocious honesty. No small talk, all big talk and I love it.

Sunday Sauce by James Ramsden. New to Substack but not to the game, a weekly recipe (and q a bit more) by a bonafide veteran of the field. James has been putting proverbial pen to paper with witty and delicious results since the early days of the blogosphere. Anyone who has written a book dedicated to bread gets my vote, as do people who make elaborate food overtures in AirBnbs, even if they don’t always *quite* work out. His post this week made me roar with laughter and is further proof that there is no such thing as too many food-related-content-subscriptions.

Proof of this is the primula, a plant I have grown to love over time rather than fallen hard for at first sight – less of a show-off than her yellow running mate the daffodil, but quietly ringing the changes along every verge and bank at this time of year. Quintessentially British, a kind of shorthand for wholesome innocence with a whiff of WI stoicism, and as such they are slathered liberally on school girls; socks and embroidery sets for beginners bestowing a naïve and incorruptible virtue. The primrose is the quietly reliable friend you probs aren’t going to fall out of a nightclub with at 3am but you will one day wake up and feel very grateful for 20 years of uncomplicated friendship  (if falling out of nightclubs is your thing, there are plenty of racy primulas to quicken the pulse below).

Sadly my nightclub days are over, temporarily at least, and this weekend was spent repeating a version of our go-to weekend plan of a pub and a walk, or preferably the other way round. An English classic we do a version of most weeks, it’s a ritual that is that rare thing in family life – entertaining for all, equal part wholesome and indulgent and endlessly adaptable depending on weather or time of year. This weekend it was around Pilton, whose most notable claim to fame is that it’s home to Glastonbury festival. Admittedly, being able to swing by the Pyramid stage and air guitar to a few lonely oaks does give a bog standard walk a bit of an edge, and arrives just at the moment when little legs are beginning to ask are we nearly there yet. But aside from the tell-tale sign of a massive metal pyramid, there is absolutely nothing to suggest that this series of fairly unremarkable Somerset fields will be heaving with happy hedonistic revellers in a few short month’s time. Much like it’s hard to believe the knobbled knuckled trees will ever be dense with leaves and the hedgerows alive with the froth of cow parsley in just a few short weeks, change often feels impossible until it happens.

Prime primulas:

As a rule primulas like damp and slightly shady spots, and being planted in natural drifts and groupings - among trees with enough open canopy, along verges and banks, or just dotted about in lawns.

Primula vulgaris – the original and the best. Perfect pale lemon of a baby’s first cardigan, happiest in damp partial shade and will self-seed about.

Primula pulverulenta – the other end of the spectrum, a candelabra primula that Sarah Raven introduced me to. Tall strong stems of hot pink whorls of flowers, much tougher than they look, flower for weeks and love a damp spot or pond edge.

Primula veris – our native cowslip, great for naturalising and another strong contender for cheeriest soul on the patch. Happy in partial shade to sun, also good in pots.

Primula ‘Gold Laced Group’ – a primula masquerading as an auricula, traditionally a bedding plant and def dialling up the kitsch. I love these in pots on my windowsill  to really get the most out of the excellent seventies colourway.

Primula melanantha – haven’t ever seen this one in the flesh, but intended to include in Mill-side project I’m working on - am extremely taken with the near black flowers against silvery stems. A little Morticia Addams and very beguiling, would love to see this alongside the innocent charms of our native cowslip

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The first was a haunting Instagram post that was doing the rounds. It was a photo of a hand buried in the rubble in Gaza, belonging to a man killed in an airstrike in Gaza. From the dusty hand, two fragile leaves emerged, leaves from the date seed the man was holding when he died, which had since germinated. It was the perfect illustration of so many complex hard-to-wrestle-with ideas, in a single hard-to-forget image. The pulse of life emerging from the complete absence of it, the strength and resilience of those first two brave little leaflets in a sea of dismal annihilation. I couldn’t stop thinking about it.

…Until my second date, which came the following night, and was (happily) with Monty Don. He was in Alicante, aka the European home of date palms (for over 1000 years no less), an accolade which has warranted it being designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. He was marvelling at the pioneering Arabic agricultural practise of using canals and date palms in an early version of companion planting to maximise yields of other crops such as pomegranates. Dates and their riches were at the beating heart of the 10^thcentury Iberian economy.  

But it turns out that the relationship between dates and Islam predate (sorry) Alicante by quite some time. Which brings me to my third and final date –  the dates that many Muslims eat to break their fast during Ramadam, which began this week. The reason being is because it’s said that the Prophet Muhammed would break his fast with a few simple dates at the end of the day, which has earned the humble fruit a starring role on both the iftar table and in the Islamic cultural canon ever since.

So having barely thought of dates since I was whizzing them into every smoothie and bowl of granola in Jan to try and use up the ones left over from Christmas, they’ve appeared three times this week in various moving and poignant ways. Thus, I have just ordered some more, and so no doubt they’ll be appearing more (in less moving and poignant ways) in the coming weeks.

Other plants that I’m grateful for this week are Euphorbia characias – a plant that would certainly be in my top 10 ever, possibly top 5. Some people are scared of it and refuse to plant it, for being ‘thuggish’ but I am quite pro thuggish (rather less so in people and governments), thuggish is useful when you’re starting a garden and I like gumption (and in people and governments).  I also don’t penalise plants for being ‘ordinary’ or ‘ubiquitous’ not least when they are as unequivocally extraordinary looking at these handsome chaps are (some vociferously disagree). At this time of year, early March, a period of the year which is often a colossal let-down weather-wise, nothing gets the party started quite like it - acid green maracas of total sunshine in an otherwise grey month, followed by a year of very respectable glaucous foliage and structure. And it’s also giving early polliantors their first decent meal in a while.

Last but not least, shout out to the smell of hyacinths which has been bestowing the pretence of spring inside the house, while it remains very much not that outside.

Other planty finds this week:

A great photographer who takes pics of farms and land scarred by agriculture – the result is these beautiful graphic images. Very into the Spanish Farmland series.

Rose Electra Harris + dress + tulips. A lot to love

While we’re on roses, a new one that I have put into a few schemes recently – don’t be put off by the colour, it’s very useful even if you don’t think it’s your thing.

And a book that is the equivalent of a hot bath and will be the best £4.20 you spend this year

But in amongst it all, there have been lots of lovely hours spent thinking about plants and latterly teaching people a way to think about plants for their gardens. So alongside genocidal horrors in distant lands and a few litres of Calpol, I’ve been absorbed in planting designs, plotting and scheming the magic that brings a project to life – literally.

Because I was hosting a workshop, I have also been thinking about my process, what I find most useful when thinking about planting design. It’s a multi-headed monster, famously hard to pin down and everyone has their own way of trying. One of the things I relish most about sitting down to do a planting plan is that I go analogue – no screens (at least until the end), which probably halves my efficiency but more than doubles my enjoyment. I surround myself with books and a file of magazine cuttings / notes I have been keeping for years, wallowing in the words and pictures. I draw planting beds with a scale rule, justify my stationery habit by doodling plants in rainbows of squiggles and marks, in a largely illegible way that makes the job of translating it to CAD later very tiresome. But it’s just so nice.

When I started thinking about the workshops, I realised how much I love the books. How much I enjoy the physical process of thumbing through them, sticking little markers on the pages and enjoying the author’s hard-won wisdom about the value of Sanguisorba mensiezii’s serrated glaucous foliage early in the season or how Eupatorium comes into flower just when other sources of nectar for bees are beginning to dwindle. You know that this is real experience, this person has grown that plant, felt the fibre of its fabric. It’s genuinely valuable information and it feels a like a gift to receive it.

As such I have a lot of books. I could feel guilty about this, because I could probably find similar info online, save the carbon etc etc. But I don’t because I love books – not just their words, but their design and layout, the images and arrangement of those images. And for what they represent – good old-fashioned time and research, a personal point of view and an opportunity to zone out of February for a while.

PS I am hosting another workshop at the gorgeous Meadow, an art gallery and restaurant, in Stockbridge Hampshire, on 25th March, 9.30am-1pm. Tickets are available here

So with that in mind, here are my top five planting books (a list that could be double the length but slightly defeats the point) in no particular order ..

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The Gardener’s Palette, Jo Thompson

Arranged by colour palette, it is not only so juicy it makes me salivate a little, it’s also extremely generous in its usefulness, giving hundreds of plant lists and combinations. There’s a great forensic element to it in which each image is dissected with the relevant plants highlighted and detailed in a handy list below. Jo also has a great substack.

Gardening with Shape, Line and Texture, Linden Hawthorne  

I love the way this is arranged – by plant shape. One of the many factors to be considered in a successful scheme, ensuring a variety of forms – dumpy mounds next to elegant arches, tall spires alongside sprawling masses will ensure your planting has a pleasing level of hectic. Each plant is generously described with key info like height (which is listed as being knee or waist height, rather than in cms, which is helpful if like me, numbers mean almost nothing).

The Dry Gardening Handbook, Oliver Filippi

Dry gardening pioneer, Oliver Filippi has been experimenting with drought tolerant planting for 20 years. This book is two decades worth of trial and error, growing plants from arid and dry climates from Chile to Southwest Australia. Alongside an overview of the various geographical zones and the practicalities of managing a dry garden, there’s an index of over 500 plants for the dry garden.

Planting in a Post-Wild World

Probably the most technical of the bunch, this book is more manifesto/strategy than reference book and extremely useful for it. Thomas Rainer and Claudia West outline their method for designing resilient landscapes, using biomimicry to create naturalistic planting schemes based on shared collective archetypal landscapes. Sounds a bit poncy, but it makes sense – designing to evoke a recognisable landscape, even if this is quite diluted / abstracted, is going to a) create more engagement because it’s familiar on a deep subconscious level and b) be more resilient because it’s build on established plant communities. Alongside the theory, there’s plenty of how-tos and case studies that bring the ideas to life

Plant Names Simplified

This is more of a companion book rather than a planting book, but I love it and it’s definitely my most thumbed. It essentially a plant-Latin/Greek dictionary,  and it appeals to my inner geek. It also makes learning a five-syllable Latin name much easier because it attaches a meaning to the word in a very pleasing fitting-together-of-a-jigsaw type way. Eg. Coreopsis from Greek koris, a bug or tick, and opsis, a resemblance, hence the common name Tickseed. Satisfying.

What are your favourite planting books? Am I missing any?

Have you ever considered where you got your taste? Why you like the things you like? Is it an authentic curiosity for things that spark joy? Or was your taste imparted upon you by an all-knowing algorithm without you really realising?

Judging by the ubiquity of pink walls, zellige tiles and naturalistic planting schemes, I would hazard that for most of us, as much as we’d like to think otherwise, it’s the latter. Which is weird, because this is not through lack of choice.  Never in history have we been afforded so many options –  we have access to veritable galaxies of hand-thrown plates, kaleidoscopes of pastel kitchen blenders, armies of Moroccan chequerboard tufted rugs … we can get whatever we want, in whatever colour and any price point, yet we all have pretty much the same. Why? Because we’re not really in control anymore, we’re often not actively choosing – we’re just receiving.

I’ve been listening to Kyle Chayka’s audiobook Filterworld (thank you Calandre - excellent rec) which explores this weird “flattened” world that has crept up on us, and it’s as fascinating as it is disturbing. I first noticed it when living in Vietnam around 2013. We travelled around South East Asia a lot – Bangkok, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Taipei, Ubud… wherever we went we’d find the same “independent” coffee shop. A coffee shop that would simultaneously comfort and depress us. Poured concrete floors, elaborate latte art used as short-hand for “reassuringly metropolitan”. Reclaimed furniture a few house plants and the requisite digital nomads tapping away at the ether. I remember crying in a Tesco carpark in Northern Thailand when I realised the quixotic promise of a road trip around the famed Opium Triangle did not match the decidedly proverbial reality. “This isn’t the authentic I wanted” I sobbed into my Tesco supernoodles waiting for our Toyota Hilux’s tyre to be changed (not my finest hour). Ten years on, it feels like the the algorithm ubiquity vortex is accelerating at an increasingly dizzying speed.

For fear of sounding like a miserable luddite, the bounty of choice we’re now all so used to, is a bit of a problem. With all the choice comes little constraint, and little constraint means creativity becomes obsolete - no thinking required. If you can have whatever you want, there’s no real creative problem to solve. Es Devlin the artist and set designer (and full-time hero of mine) talks about how fundamental the early years of her career at the Bush Theatre working on shoestring budgets were to the discipline she now applies to unlimited budgets. How can she trust her ability to find the single right thing, when she could have anything?  Answer: By having the discipline she honed early on in her career to identify a problem and solve it, the discipline to think.

We don’t think any more, we just passively receive what the algorithm (largely correctly, if unimaginatively) thinks we will like. We don’t build record collections (or even Spotify playlists) or design our homes over time, based on deep and thorough research, guided by a set of constraints – physical, financial, geographical, emotional. We mostly add, follow, copy, paste things that have been fed to us by machine learning.

But with gardens, (praise be) it’s different - they fundamentally cannot be created like this. They are intrinsically tethered to constraints you’d be a fool to ignore. That’s not to say they’re not totally immune to fads and trends, but they require real thought and creativity. The location, the soil, the aspect, all pose problems to solve. The client, the client’s lifestyle, their budget and interests. All these limit choices in a wholly positive way. You can’t have lavender in a basement courtyard, like you probs should avoid planting shade seekers on a sunny wall.

BUT, and this is the important bit – you also need to ignore a few rules. Some of the best gardens (buildings, dresses, films, rooms) have something surprising. Something that says the person that designed this has a real human brain that she uses confidently to express her point of view.  Something that Chat GPT wouldn’t think of.

As you may have detected, this mad AI-driven, post-truth world we’re in has really given me the willies. I understand that there’s a lot AI is doing to make life better, “frictionless”,  but there’s a lot it’s mucking about with from democracy to photography and quite a bit in between. Thankfully, gardens are pleasingly resistant to it. Not only are they real and best experienced in the flesh, but I don’t think an algorithm could make a good one. At least, not yet anyway.

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And now, with no irony at all, here are some planty things me and my algo found on the interweb this week.

Investing in nature, a new way to invest -nature as an asset class.

Art in flowers – an florist reimagines famous artworks in floral displays. Genius

Two cookbooks I am longing to arrive  - one debut, one already a firm friend with new goodness to share

It’s rhubarb season, and I’m very much here for it. Call me old fashioned, but stewed with orange juice and sugar over Greek yoghurt is hard to beat. As is crumble, but I’m going to give sumac (for which I have a well documented appreciation) a whirl.

A pot I’d really want if my current housemates weren’t 3 and 7.

The trippy world of the Celtic Rainforest

Depressing and not that surprising, but on the upside, very cool indeed

One of my fave Substacks pays homage to the mighty cauliflower

Other plants that are giving me the ‘cheer up love’ are Narcissus Tête-à-Tête, the name alone inspiring a little pep a pep in my step a... Dinky in the extreme, shamelessly sunny and desperate to jolly up your desk  / kitchen window sill / bedside table.

Hazel catkins are beginning to unfurl and provide great entertainment to three and thirty-eight year olds alike. Give them a wiggle and watch them do their nipple-tassle routine and release a cloud of neon chartreuse pollen.

We’ve got an enormous (forgot to prune) Lonicera fragrantissima in the garden, and as the name suggests, has a knock-out smell. A few stems in the house is enough to make Diptique envious – plus it’s almost the only thing delivering blossom at this time of year.

This cheered me, sort of, although I am currently sporting another type of ugly lawn – the mother-of-football-playing children variety.

It’s Purple Sprouting Broccoli season, which is very pleasing indeed. It could taste revolting but I’d still be piling it into my basket £2 bunch by £2 bunch because it’s just so darned good to look at. Thankfully judging a book by its purple cover pays off in this instance, I could eat it by the kilo. Fave ways with PSB tend to include anchovy – with garlic, chilli, lemon zest and parmesan in pasta, or a gratin type vibe like this. Also great Asian-style, stir fried with the holy trinity, ginger / garlic / chilli, on top of steamed rice or noods with a fried egg (and liberal dusting of crispy fried onions, sesame seeds and a good chilli oil to anoint).  

This lovely thing arrived in the post as a surprise from a very kind friend, and not only is it beautifully illustrated, and includes some delish recipes from favourite cooks,  I’m also very much enjoying reversion to the analogue way of working out what day we’re on.

Like almost everyone else in the country, I’m dreaming hard of summer days and plotting getaways to yank me through the next eight weeks. If Somerset is on your wishlist this year, may I heartily recommend this place where I promise all your rolling-countryside-retreat fantasies will come true. Decca and husband Alex’s cabin on the edge of their farm overlooks the Somerset levels. Built by hand, using traditional techniques and furnished and decorated by local artists and craftspeople, this is The Real Deal. And to top it off, Decca will load up a hamper on request of home-reared sausages, locally pressed apple juice and proper Somerset butter to slather on a smug slice of local sourdough.

An incredible story about the most famous man you’ve never heard of.

And now over to Arthur Cole, head of Programs at the Newt in Somerset, hardened galanthophile and all round plant whisperer…

Everyone loves a snowdrop, harbingers of hope that they are… but what differentiates us from the hardcore Galanthophile?

• A galanthophile is peculiar sort of animal, many hibernate for up to eleven months and do not emerge from the undergrowth until the end of January. Some have adapted however, and with the increased availability of both early-flowering species (Galanthus peshmenii, comes up in September) and late-flowering cultivars (G. ‘Alice’s Late’, G. ‘Mordred’, G. Jennie Owen’, often still going strong well into March), they can be active for 6 months of the year.

• The difference between a ‘snowdrop admirer’ and a ‘galanthophile’ is the intensity of the admiration; a galanthophile obsesses over snowdrops and during January cannot think of anything else but what awaits them in February.

Tell us something we don’t know about Snowdrops?

• Snowdrops contain a compound used for treatment of mild to moderate dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. The compound is known as ‘galantamine’, after the genus nameGalanthus, it is an acetylcholinesterase. It was first isolated by a team of Bulgarian chemists, led by Dimitar Paskov, in 1956. It is now used by the NHS.

If you were a Snowdrop, which cultivar would you be and why?

• G. ‘Esther Merton’, as this is the friendliest and most loquacious of the snowdrops. Where most snowdrop have bowed heads, looking at their toes, ‘Esther Merton’ turns her head up to greet you, almost as if to say, “Good morning! Come in and know me better!”

• As an aside, you cannot name a snowdrop after yourself, a snowdrop needs to be named for you by someone else. If you are graced to receive this honour, you then enter the hallowed halls of ‘The Immortals’ – this is an exclusive club made up of people who have a snowdrop named after them, they meet once a year (usually in February, naturally) and have a grand banquet and discuss all things snowdrops.

Are there any famous Snowdrops we should know about?

• Any self-respecting collection should display distinctive variation within the genus, therefore my “top ‘drops” include three essential species (they demonstrate the three types of leaf vernation and thus the first step in identifying any snowdrop) and an easily achievable handful of cultivars:

  Species:

• G. nivalis aka. common snowdrop (applanate vernation, original and best, forms drifts, essential as a breeding ground for new hybrids, beautiful on a slope)

• G. elwesii aka. greater snowdrop (supervolute vernation, the first of the large snowdrops to create a stir)

• G. plicatus aka plicate snowdrop (explicative or plicate vernation, essential gene pool for marvellous cultivars e.g. G. plicatus ‘E. A Bowles’

  Cultivars:

• G. ‘Hippolyta’ – one of the Greatorex (Heyrick Greatorex (1884-1954) marvellously named snowdrop breeder, if Asterix comix had a gardener this would be his name!) doubles (all named after Shakespeare’s heroines)

• G. ‘Green Tear’ – still the finest of the virescent snowdrops (they have green outers and well as inners (‘outers’ and ‘inners’ refer to the perianth segments)) and a real do-er

• G. ‘South Hayes’ – marvellously strong green mark on the outers (sadly reportedly unstable due to increase in plants derived through twin-scaling)

• G. ‘Primrose Warburg’ – a resilient ‘yellow’ snowdrop (yellow ovary and marking), though the intensity of the yellow has since be surpassed by G. plicatus ‘Wendy’s Gold’ and G. nivalis ‘Fiona’s Gold’)

• G. plicatus E.A Bowles – the boldest of the ‘poculiform’ snowdrops, a prosperous, almost glowing, flower whereby the inners are modified to resemble the outers – to die for.

Best places to see Snowdrops? 

• Colesbourne Park, ‘England’s greatest snowdrop garden’ – Country Life. Why is Colesbourne the best? 

• Because it has 350 different cultivars displayed in a 10-acre garden setting.

• Cultivars are labelled correctly.

• The companion planting (Crocus tommasinianus, Cyclamen coum, Leucojum vernum, winter aconites, hellebores, Prunus mume ‘Beni-chidori’) is fulsome and exquisite.

• The plant stall tends to have varieties that are rare and in short supply elsewhere.

• Sir Henry (the great-grandson of the Victorian collector, John Henry Elwes, after whom G. elwesii is named) leads the tours and is often stationed in amongst the G. ‘S.Arnott’ (largest patch in the world) – he is a great raconteur with a wit as dry as a martini.

• Once you have been to Colesbourne there is no need to go anywhere else, your snowdrop pilgrimage is complete! Well, since you will be in Gloucestershire you may as well visit Painswick Rococo Gardens. And Anglesey Abbey in Norfolk is pretty good too. 

Aside from snowdrops, what other plants get your heart racing? 

• I tend to love a collection of any individual genus, quite old fashioned of me really, but I particularly love to celebrate the variety within a single genus as that is when you appreciate the subtle differences. The collection of apple trees in the Parabola at the Newt is a particular favourite, it has taught me that an apple blossom isn’t just a blossom is a blossom is a blossom.

If you could share one piece of plant wisdom, what would it be?

• Remember the advice gifted us by the great gardeners who have worked the soil and the seasons and accrued a lifetime of experience, one that comes to me everyday is Beth Chatto’s, “Right plant, right place” – “Plants, like people, have their preferences and don’t like being thrust into the nearest available hole.”

In amongst my lengthy, vague and hard to quantify list of resolutions is a promise to be a bit more consistent with this newsletter, and within that comes an acknowledgement that time continues to not be on my side. So like squats, Spanish vocab and weeding, I’m going to aim for little and more often. In that vein, here is a 2024-style bijou TTAP featuring an article I wrote for the wonderful Up With The Lark’s Christmas Paper and a list of Plant-Based Joy to help you hunker.

Plant-based joy in January

A plant-based night oil that ticks every box – smells good, looks good, is good and doesn’t break the bank. Surprisingly hard to find, but luckily for you, I’ve done it. If like me, you judge books by covers, top marks awarded for packaging I want to keep and that is also refillable.  They also have lots of other lovely looking potions with pithy product names which I intend to diligently work my way through. I started with Dream Dream Dream and dreamy dreamy dreamy it is.

Truly, (I know everyone says that but really and truly), the best chocolate in the world, that is now available for delivery from Vietnam to your dining table. Each single origin bar is made with the cacao of a single province to capture the character of each terroir. Founders Sam and Vincent pioneered a new kind of chocolate industry in Vietnam which puts the producers at the heart of the business and Wonka-style, built chocolate factories to match. We were neighbours in Saigon, and it’s such a joy to see Marou find its rightful place on the world stage. Also, check out the packaging.

For anyone thinking about setting up a school Gardening Club this year, maybe this is the prod you need. A very inspiring webinar with six speakers talking about the wisdom they’ve gleaned from setting up Gardening Clubs for kids. I’m in.

Thank you Lucky Saint for making dry Jan a little damp (we tried them all and this is the closest you’ll get to a real life delicious pint) and White Mausu for bringing the party to every bowl of veg

An inspiring and entirely replicable model from an incredible city

A brilliant film that made me question what creativity is in the digital age

Blood oranges – name something more beautiful or appreciated on a grey Jan day? I (bloody) love them, and have been going full tutti frutti with beetroot, hazelnuts and sheep’s cheese salads because #Jan but what I really want to make is something like this with inappropriately enormous dollop of thick double cream.

As if I needed another reason to go to Mexico – the bonkers story of an eccentric Englishman’s quest to create his own kind of paradise “a patch of picturesque insanity” where “MC Escher drawings have come to life and mated with Frida Kahlo’s paintings”.

A dear friend gave me this book for Christmas and despite its name, it’s not just for Christmas – a paean to winter in its glacial entirety. Best enjoyed by a fire or under a heavy blanket.

Happy hunkering xx

Beautiful Mess

At a garden conference in November I came across a wonderful phrase “messy ecosystems, orderly frames”. The title of a research paper (bear with me), it describes how landscape design that improves the ecology isn’t appreciated unless recognisable garden norms are adhered to alongside it – i.e.  you can design a landscape that is brilliant for the birds and bees, so long as it is contained within an orderly frame - there needs to be some visual cue that what you’re looking at isn’t just unfettered chaos. Make it pretty.

Ecosystems are messy, tangled webs of life, a labyrinth of mutual give and take and un-sentimental biology. All very well in the actual wild (whatever that is) but in a garden, it’s generally not what people ask for. There needs to be some semblance of order alongside the chaos, a sign that some taming has happened, and that we’re still in control, even if that is a bit of a delusion.

Sounds like a fair deal to me. What I like about this is the admission that beauty and aesthetics are important – maybe even essential. For a long time, the assumption was that what is good, doesn’t look good, and what does look good, probably isn’t that good. But hurrah, at long last, wanting things to look good is not a crime. Beauty is a vital to engagement – if we don’t feel moved emotionally, we are not going to be invested in protecting it. As the wonderful garden designer Alison Jenkins says – beauty is yield.  We should be actively designing to harvest beauty as it’s an essential carrot after the toil of creating. But the deal is, you’ve got to have some mess too. And in winter the mess can feel a bit much. The party’s over, the flowers have long since departed and we’re left with collapsed, denuded, sorry-looking plants that you don’t often see on Instagram.

But the mess is where the magic happens, and we have all got a bit uptight about it. The mess of a winter garden is nature in full fettle. It’s the stage in the year where, like us, things retreat and hibernate, preserving and recouping energy levels, on the surface operating at bare minimum. But below deck, the engines are whirring preparing for the gargantuan task of doing it all again come spring. All those wild and frayed edges are the perfect winter retreat for all the bugs and birds that are not able to fly off to the tropics for the winter months. So although it’s not so obviously attractive, it’s absolutely vital that we allow this stage of the cycle to happen. What you just need is an orderly frame.

An orderly frame could arrive in the form of a lovely loose mound of something shaggy and touch-able like Phillyrea angustifolia or Pittosporum tenuifolium (both evergreen, not to be clipped too tightly). A generous dome or two of these will provide heft and form to balance unruly nature doing her thing next door. Or for those who like a costume change, a handsome dollop of Beech or Hornbeam on a lawn or mid-border will do the same, but give a lovely autumn-winter display turning russet brown before eventually dropping their leaves in early spring to make way for that very particular and irresistible shade of new spring green.

Hedges are another underutilised tool that can be deployed to bequeath order – tall ones instead of a fence are an ecosystem unto themselves, low ones act like punctuation in the garden, and evergreen ones create a lovely dark backdrop for seasonal planting. For those that fancy themselves a dab hand with the shears, you can clip them into shapes – undulating curved hedges or even eccentric topiary teapots (probably not for beginners).

A frame might also be a lovely tree, who has been chosen for her gorgeous curves not her more obvious blooms. The silhouette of a tree is one of the few things that benefits from the scrutiny of cold winter light, and often makes the perfect frame – or focal point - to an otherwise slightly dishevelled garden. No garden is too small for a tree, and it’s the best low-maintenance, high-impact option out there.

Much like a bare face or an unfurnished home, the structure becomes important when things are stripped back. Hard-landscaping is much more visible in the winter than in summer when you have a haze of Cosmos to distract you, so use it to create some aesthetically pleasing order in the winter months. Natural materials are not only better for the planet and everyone who lives on it, but they look better too – they will age gracefully and take on a patina that neither money nor time can buy. They don’t have to be expensive - a redbrick path in herringbone is a lovely thing to look at through the grey of winter, as is a hand-made hazel obelisk, even without the clouds of sweet peas.

Gardens are a big opportunity in the UK -  they make up nearly 2 million acres of land across the country – a significant chunk that together could be a giant tapestry of mini-messy, healthy and beautiful ecosystems. And if we can find some orderly frames, allowing nature (and the “mess” that comes with it) to flourish, requires little or no compromise from anyone.

Real actual unbearable mess

Photographer Henk Wildschut, for his project Rooted.

In 2011 Henk visited refugee camps around the world, and discovered the many ways displaced people chose to cultivate the temporary homes they found themselves in using plants to make gardens and connect them to a life they were no longer living.

The resulting photos are hauntingly beautiful portraits of gardens, created to provide food and sustenance or simply to create beauty in the stark and chaotic realties they find themselves in. These miniature gardens are often just a few tin cans planted with flowers, or of a handful of seeds struggling to sprout in a patch of meagre soil. But they illustrate fragile hope, defiance and a desire to nurture and tend in the most challenging of circumstances. “In a refugee camp, however, the sight of gardens … takes on a different significance. The more desperate the situation in which the garden is planted, the more emphasis there is on the willpower of the gardener.”

“The arrival of thousands of migrants (to Calais Harbour) in 2015 had provoked stringent security measures. It became clear to the camp residents that their stay in the French seaport of Calais would last longer than they had planned. By planting little gardens in this unwelcoming setting, the migrants in the sand dunes seemed to be striving to reconcile themselves with the situation. They used plants to create a gentler, more domestic atmosphere. The impersonality of the unofficial camp was diminished and the camp dwellers literally began to put down roots in foreign soil.”

The New Yorker wrote a great piece on Henk’s project Rooted, and you can find more of it on his website.

Apples

I’m heading into my third apple day in three weeks this weekend - an occupational hazard if you’re a Somerset resident. For those who dont have a BA or TA postcode, an Apple Day is a very wholesome day out where everyone gets together to press their apples, drink apple juice (fermented for most) and eat apple-y treats like toffee apples and apple flapjacks. And they’re a great day out.

I bloody love the simple pleasures of an apple. A proper apple that is, not a tasteless watery number flown if from foreign climes. Preferably an obscure breed that will almost certainly have a superficial blemish of some kind on the surface, but has real delicious crunch and flavour. Aside from snaffling straight from the tree, these are some regular and new fave recipes plus some apple merch:

A classic for a reason: toast the nuts, get good leaves, can also swap apples for pears, and add / or add celery.

If Mary Berry says it’s easy, it probably is, and it makes a change form crumble (blasphemy!)

Savoury tart tatin courtesy of Nigel

Grated apple and cheese on toast - kids / Sunday night / hunger breakfast with Worcestershire sauce on top. Delish.

Our local cider (I like half half but go medium if like it sweeter), they also do a great drink called Ice Cider which is great over … ice

Lovely kids book about apples, and one for grown ups too

We have just come back from a few weeks in Southern Spain, which anyone could tell you is quite an inhospitable place to be in August if you’re a plant (and possibly if you’re a human). Yet a cool 43 degrees didn’t deter me, quite the opposite – I was enthralled at the bounty of botany seemingly defying the law of thermodynamics, and as ever in awe of the many ways plants make up our experience of a place and the fabric of our lives.  

Here are my plants postcards from Spain:

Almond / Prunus dulcis

I’ve decided I’d really like an almond grove – a slightly more original riff on an olive grove (so passe), but implies the same sultry heat, dusty roads and meals that will forever be indebted to the fruits of your harvest. Outside our villa there was a lovely old Almond tree that was excellent to climb and had the added advantage of being a strategic position from which to pelt unripe almonds at your parents when they’re snoozing after lunch. We also got introduced to a delicious almond liqueur called Amarguinha, which was poured over ice, with lemon and a dash of soda and so refreshing and delish, but that did that annoying trick of tasting completely revolting when we got home. Almonds also featured regularly at dinner whooshed up with roasted peppers, garlic and oil to make Romesco for dunking BBQ lamb cutlets. Safe to say, I like almonds.

Stone Pine

Donada National Park is in the far south-west of Spain, near the Portuguese border and we spent quite a lot of time driving through it on route to the cool relief of the Atlantic in searing heat. Although it’s known for its lagoons and marshlands, in August none of these are in evidence, instead it’s a barren moonscape carpeted with what feels like the entirety of the global population of Stone Pine. Stone Pines are a particularly characterful tree – in youth, a bushy globe, in mid-age an umbrella canopy on a thick trunk, and, in maturity, a broad and flat crown. All extremely pleasing, and at this scale there is something of Dr Seuss about them. Jury still out on how well they translate to the UK.

Esparto

Esparto is a fiber produced from two species of perennial grasses – Stipa tenacissima and Lygeum spartum. The Spanish name for the plant is atocha and they have been using to make sandals, baskets, rugs and ropes for millennia. Today it’s used to make baskets (of the like you swan about in markets with one slung on your shoulder), but also in agriculture to harvest grapes / olives / almonds. A wide strip of plaited raw esparto, named "pleita" in Spanish, is the traditional mold for Manchego cheese. I also saw some amazing woven blinds, like a chunky woven rug, rolled up as a blind above unglazed windows at the Tio Pepe winery which were unrolled and dropped to keep rooms cool in the heat of the day. I was delighted to find that after 15 years of faithful service, my much-loved basket bag that I bought in Cadaques many moons ago, had a small hole in the scuffed bottom corner, giving me the perfect excuse to indulge in my second favourite holiday hobby, basket shopping. Still trying to work out how to import the blinds.

Rubber fig / Ficus elastica

This was a truly stop the bus tree. A tree that I dragged my children off the beach to come and have a look at and even they were impressed. It looks like something out of a movie, a tree that waits for everyone to go home and then comes to life and slopes off down the seafront. There’s actually a pair of them, and were planted in 1903 having been brought to Cadiz by two missionary nuns returning from India. You can’t help but be awed by a tree of such epic proportions, a tree that like every other plant once started as a tiny seed.

The majestic rubber figs of Cadiz, ready to wander off down the seafront (photos above not my own).

Palomino grape

Despite my well documented enthusiasm for drinking it, I have never really engaged with viticulture in any meaningful way. The grape varieties, the pretentious lingo, the complex science of terroir and ageing. Sherry however is a different story. Grown and produced in predominantly one area, (Jerez and Sanlucar de Mayor), the resulting wines – fino sherry and manzanilla – are a much more manageable endeavour. The palomino grape grows in the chalky limestone soils known as Albariza, which have superlative moisture-retaining powers, allowing them to store enough rainfall to nourish the vines through the dry summer months. The proximity of the Atlantic has an important role to play in maintaining humidity and moderation temperatures – a perfect adaptation of plant and place, honed and refined over hundreds of years. I have long been a fino-fan, and unlike aforementioned Amarguinha, it travels very well, and three weeks of really getting to know it has done nothing to quench my thirst.

Olive / Olea europea

And of course there were olives, thousands of them - in rows to produce that magical amber liquid that we happily slosh onto everything, and also the huge old gents parked up in town squares to provide shade and listen in on old ladies’ conversations. We ate them by the kilo - skewered with guandillas, on the beach out of cans with a beer, and in a kind of Panzanella with anchovies, tomatoes and stale bread.

Honourable mentions:

Geranium – in terracotta pots in white-washed villages, gaudy ones, delicate ones, all much appreciated and admired

Aeonium – I have always been a huge fan, and now that Sarah Price has put them on the map I suspect others will come round to their extra-terrestrial beauty. Especially as our summers become more like Spain’s.

Tomato – breakfast, lunch and supper. Mostly breakfast, blitzed and smeared on toast with a liberal slosh of olive oil and a café con leche with over-heated milk (for the handsome fee of 2 euros). Gazpacho also, lots of.

Plumbago - New to me, at least in the flesh, but was planted all around the villa, and also on balconies and sidewalks. Such a pure and uncorrupted blue, flowers not unlike phlox, seems far too delicate to withstand Andalusia in August but appeared to be extremely happy.

Plant-based recipes that I’m cooking this month

Romesco – Finca Buen Vino

Almond and roast pepper dip which is extremely easy, totally delicious and goes with almost everything – fish, lamb, chicken, roasted veggies, as a dip, in sandwiches… This recipe is Jeannie Chesterton’s, whose farm Finca Buen Vino, we got married at 9 years ago (if you want a foodie weekend away in Spain, you can’t do better than this).

2 garlic cloves, 3-4 slices of stale bread, 70g blanched almonds, olive oil, 2 large red peppers, 6 large tomatoes, red wine vinegar

Wrap garlic in foil and roast with the tomatoes. Roast / blacken the peppers over a flame, then put in a plastic bag to steam and remove the skins. Squeeze out the garlic from its skins, and put in a blender with peppers and tomatoes and blitz. Add crumbled bread and almonds, and start dribbling in olive oil until you reach a stiff but grainy mayonnaise texture. Season with salt, pepper and red wine vinegar. Keeps in fridge for up to a week.

Smacked cucumber tahini noodles – I’m obsessed with Mob, and this is one of many winning mid-week masterpieces I have been cooking on repeat.

Meera Sodha’s tomato curry – I think I mentioned this last year, but there’s only a few weeks a year when you can really cook this, so here it is again. So. Damn. Good.

Non-Spanish hero plant

Cotoneaster franchetti – I agree, not one of the plant kingdoms greatest lookers, and as a result much maligned and most often found in carparks, hanging off feather-board fences in ugly alleyways or used in an attempt to ‘green up’ a high-traffic roundabout… well now I know why - it is highly effective at soaking up air pollution. In just seven days a 1-metre length of well-managed dense hedge will mop up the same amount of pollution that a car emits over a 500-mile drive. 500 miles! So I take back my mean thoughts, another one to file in the extremely clever plants folder.