It seems like ages since I wrote a proper Blog.

Not only does it seem like ages, it is ages. Since before the Malvern Show which is now fading comfortably into the rosy sunset of memory (fobbing you off with shoddy YouTube films is not quite the same – although I realise that it gives the more sensitive among you a bit of a rest from my drivellings).

Malvern was marvellous as always with jolly japes and the pleasure of visits to a good Indian restaurant in the town with both Matthew Wilson (i) and Mike Dilger. It was mildly disarming at first because we seemed to be climbing the stairs into somebody’s flat: not only that but passing the sort of wallpaper one finds in mid range suburban brothels (apparently).

Since then we have had the thrills of the Chelsea Flower Show (hooray for Cleve) where I loafed about doing some light filming for the BBC Red Button which was great fun but has now also vanished into the murk never to be seen again. I also rode on Diarmuid Gavin’s pink flying podulator: sadly it was very dull because we had to sit  on a garden bench wearing seat belt so, rather than enjoying panoramic views and swaying gently, it was more like travelling in the lift at a high rise florists.

We also found the time to make this: which, should you be watching without any prior knowledge of British television, will make absolutely no sense at all.

[youtube clip_id=”WFDcIIcR6-k”]

I have also been to the Lancashire and to Suffolk,written some stuff dangerously close to deadline, interviewed a fashion mogul for the Financial Times (nothing to do with gardens-I don’t know why me either but it was fun), got very wet (ii) and set out an unnecessary number of plants (many of them leftovers from Chelsea gardens). The week before the show is a good time to visit Crocus as there are all sorts of interesting things lying around that the likes of Cleve and Luciano have rejected. I had to keep ringing up and asking whether they really wanted quite so many Gillenias or Dianthus cruentus. Top discovery was a yellow version of Rosa mutabilis which I had never seen before: very lovely.

Have you all voted in the RHS council elections? If not you have until June 24th. You can vote for up to five people out of seven. The result is announced on July 2nd at the AGM. I am hoping that it will be a little like the results part of the Eurovision Song Contest but I suspect that, in this regard, I may be disappointed.

On a different note: one of my more perverse amusements is to read things that I know will annoy me. Articles in the paper about minor celebrities and their life and death struggles with cellulite, opinion pieces in the Daily Mail, snippets of religious bigotry: you know the sort of thing. Into this category fits Anne Wareham’s book, The Bad Tempered Gardener. I was half considering ignoring this publication as I may be about to make myself quite unpopular in certain circles but, to concur with the author’s quest for honesty and openness in all things, thought I had better come out with an opinion: for what that is worth.

I skimmed this book as a manuscript before publication when Anne asked me for a quote , there it is slapped on the front cover “at once entertaining, opinionated and deliciously annoying”. (iii) I have now read it again between hard covers and stick with my original quotation.  At times this is an amusing , entertaining and often touching book, it is undoubtedly opinionated and sometimes it is really, really annoying.

One of my problems is that I am, obviously, part of the great conspiracy of garden writers against whom Anne rails therefore my opinion is obviously suspect as most of us are, apparently, guilty of dishonesty. I happily write for many of the garden magazines and am responsible for many of the things that Anne despises for example I have written pieces about plant collections and old fashioned gardens and rather liked them all.

At the outset, however, I must emphatically state that I thoroughly and whole heartedly approve of Anne’s life work. Her dogged mission to elevate the status of gardens from a popular hobby to an art form is laudable: I would love to see garden design elevated beyond the fluffy but my argument is in the way she goes about this crusade. Rather than persuading people she seems determined to ruffle the danders of almost everybody as she goes along. This is not usually considered to be the best way to gain converts.

By the time you get to the end of the book you are fully aware of all the things that the author dislikes (too many plants, gardening, turning compost heaps, editors, show gardens, television producers, garden visitors, plants, nurseries, vegetables, mowing and almost every garden, whether public or private, in the country.) The truth seems to be that Anne does not really enjoy many gardens or any sort of gardening and yet continues to force herself to do both. I am not sure why as it seems to give her so little pleasure. It is almost an act of penance like supplicants walking across stony ground on their knees: a penance that must be served in order to gain true enlightenment.

What we do not really know is what she likes: apart from her own garden, the Veddw. It is difficult not to get a bit depressed by such relentless grinding down of almost everything and it means that many of the best points are a bit lost amongst the moans.

But we persevere because we know that, at heart, the principle is sound and we will her to convert people to her way of thinking. But there is a pervading feeling that we, the readers, are being disapproved of if we do not agree with everything – without question. There is a slight sneer to the tone of the book towards anybody who might dare to disagree with Anne’s very rigid view of the world or whom she feels unworthy of receiving the message..

The best bits of the book are when she writes about her own garden in Wales: this is obviously a place about which she feels passionately, here is a labour of love into which she, and her husband Charles, have put a huge amount of energy, artistic flair and intellectual rigour. At times she is unnecessarily defensive and there is rather to much protesting her round hole/square peg position but she is obviously as comfortable as she finds it possible to be when she is at home. And yet at the same time she wants people to come a criticise her garden, to tell her to change things and point out where she has gone wrong. This is not a puppy I am prepared to whip, if this garden is the only place where Anne is happy then that is good enough for me. After all that is why almost every other person in the country gardens, to make them happy.

This is definitely a book you should read: just be prepared to hurl it from you in exasperation every so often.

I am now off to spread plants across the Cotswolds before girding my loins in readiness for five days frolicking around the NEC for Gardeners World Live next week. I am on compereing duty with all the usual mob of notables. Come and say Hullo if you are in the vicinity.

I am listening to Come With Us by the Chemical Brothers. The picture is of Helianthemum Henfield Brilliant.

This time last year I was moaning about RyanAir.

(i) Dining in the company of MW can be disconcerting as middle aged women queue up to gaze, awestruck, upon the full majesty of his ruggedness.
(ii) Isn’t it odd how we grumble about drought and long for rain but, when it comes, we get bored of it very quickly. Especially when one has become unused to such things and leaves one’s waterproofs draped over the dustbin.
(iii) The full, unedited quote was “There is a rumour, hopefully unfounded, that Anne Wareham is actually not bad-tempered: just a bit miffed. This book bounces all over the garden world colliding with almost everything from magazines to established horticultural techniques. It is at once entertaining, opinionated and deliciously annoying. She may never work again but we are left in no doubt what she thinks.”

I am sitting in the Novotel at Grand Designs, well not exactly at Grand Designs but very close.

There are a number of interesting things happening at the show including the customary handsome display of hot tubs. I am running a very smart Garden Design studio with my name on a big yellow cube dangling from the ceiling.

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The form is that there are four newly qualified garden designers giving free consultations while I hover and offer sage advice when required. All very jolly, you can come and take advantage of all this if you hurry: the show runs until Sunday night and Three Men are cavorting on stage in the afternoon.

The Novotel meanwhile has surprised me. My first impression was that it was the sort of place where former communist apparatchiks would come to drink themselves stupid, cavort with doughy thighed good time girls and, in certain cases, fling themselves from windows. Actually it is quiet, cleanish and has a view of the Victoria dock. The breakfast, however, is utterly loathsome: in particular the scrambled eggs.

After Sunday there is Malvern to look forward to next week. This will be my seventh Malvern (I think) in which time it has changed a great deal. This year there is more serious side to the show as the theme of Biodiversity runs through the things that are happening in the theatre: this leaves no room for Joe Swift and I to do flower arranging. This will doubtless come as a huge relief to the ranks of Floral Artists out there as we did little to promote high standards in the world of competitive floristry. Instead there will be wise words from Matthew Wilson and Jekka McVicar (on Thursday), Chris Beardshaw (on Friday), Joe Swift (on Saturday) and Mike Dilger and Terry Walton (on Sunday).

I will be flitting around doing links and other stuff including an interview with Sue Biggs on Friday morning: she is, as I am sure you know, the Director General of the RHS and a thoroughly good egg. If you wish to ask searching questions about the future of the organisation then this is the place to be – hecklers welcome.

We also have a book slot where I chat to various garden writers and you get the chance to buy signed copies of their glossy ouevres. Included are the Guardian Royal Bouquet correspondent, Lia Leendertz. Martyn Cox (who writes a couple of books a week), Noel Kingsbury (also very prolific but with a Phd: Martyn just has a gelled forelock),) Anne Wareham who will talk about her book -The Bad Tempered Gardener – which is opinionated and alternately annoying and amusing (a bit like picking a scab) and Mark “Veg Head” Diacono whose book, the Taste of the Unexpected, is quite old now but still very readable(ii)

I am exhausted already. I am hoping that there will be various bloggers and Twitterati loafing about as well.

I have also found some time this week to visit Arundel. Rather a pretty town with a castle and softly flowing river overlooked by gentle Sussex countryside blah, blah, blah. There is also a rather remarkable garden belonging to the Duke of Norfolk and designed by Julian and Isabel Bannerman.

My visit was quite fleeting so this will not be any more than a quick postcard but, in brief: Trademark whopping oak structures, some very floaty planting (excluding a rather ugly variegated elder at one point) and some spectacular fountains including a dancing coronet – a gold crown rotating on top of a high power jet of water surrounded by exquisite shell work.

Proper Bannerman showmanship in other words. Beautifully constructed, theatrical and exciting.

There is, however, a strange arrangement of rock and palm trees sitting in the middle of a grass labyrinth which I really could not fathom. Why was it there? It seemed like a step too far. There may well be a perfectly logical explanation but it looked cluttered and detracted from both surroundings and labyrinth. I must do some research to discover what is going on.

I am listening to the gentle hum of the air conditioning as I cannot work out how to open the window, nor can I understand the taps. There seems to be no clear indication which way is hot and which way cold so I am skittering between third degree burns and hypothermia. At the risk of sounding like a disgruntled old Colborn: what is wrong with having one tap labelled ‘Hot’ and one ‘Cold’.

The picture is of ants on peony buds.

(i) I was reminded by @nicelittleplace on Twitter the other day that the abbreviative noun for a group of floral artists is Flarts. As is “Over there is the Flart tent”. This is not intended to be at all pejorative but merely affectionate. The other acronym is for the Chris Beardshaw Scholarship Gardens who are known as the CBeebies.

(ii) It also has many other uses for those who have been given a copy as a gift but prefer not to read such stuff. For example, as a chopping board, a waterproof hat, a partially effective cricket box, a frisbee, an oven glove and a way of ironing out unruly body hair. It has also just been nominated for yet another award (yawn) this time by the Guild of Food Writers. I think it unlikely that any of the other authors (not even Anne) are in the running for that one. Bravo.

I am returned from holiday. I assume that you noticed my absence? if not then I am glad as it means that you have all been terribly busy doing important things other than reading this blog……..

It was a blissful time during which we did the following: slept late, went fly fishing (but caught nothing – evidence left (i)), swam early in the morning (ii), lay around on beaches, wandered through gardens, danced (iii), boated, sailed (iv), played billiards, lay on more beaches, climbed a hill, walked down the other side, got bitten by a midge, ate langoustines, crabs &stuffed squid, stayed up late, lay on another beach, sat on a rock, collected shells (v), ate slightly sandy salad, bounced on heather, cut down a tree, went surfing before breakfast (vi) and other sundry activities.

For more details about Colonsay go and look at this: also if any of you would like to exchange an off season holiday for a couple of days gardening on the island then please tell me.

I also managed to read one and a half books which may not sound very much but you will realise from the above list that things were quite hectic most of the time. One book was called Blood Knots by Luke Jennings and is rather a fine memoir mostly about fishing with interwoven bits of family history and schools in the 1960s (vii). Fishing is not a subject with which I have ever shown huge interest – nor success (viii) – but this is a good book even for the non-fisherman. He was taught the finer points of fishing by Robert Nairac who was later assassinated by the IRA..

The other half book is by Anthony Woodward and was sent to me by the ever delicious Camilla Swift. It is entitled The Garden In The Clouds and is the story of his building a garden up a Welsh mountain. His aim is to get into the Yellow Book, I have not got to the point where we find out whether or not he does but I suspect a happy ending. At the moment (page 94) he is dragging a railway carriage up the side of said mountain. I read an interesting review of this book in the Spectator written by grumpy Welsh person Byron Rogers. He spent the first part of the review pointing out that a very basic mistake had been made. Mr Woodward chuntles on about his house being called Tair Ffynnon which means ‘Four wells’ in Welsh. Except it doesn’t: it means Three Wells. Mr Rogers then rants a bit about English disrespect before admitting that it is actually rather a well written and amusing book. Which it is.

There now, you weren’t expecting literary criticism were you? (ix)

Thank you to all of you who wished me Happy Birthday via blog comment, Twitter or text. I spent the actual day driving so there was not a lot of time for raucous celebrations. I did have a small cake while on the ferry.

A few days before we went away we, as in Three Men Went To Mow, pootled off to Essex to play around in the Gibberd Garden. This eccentric garden full of sculptures and odd structures built out of concrete was made by Sir Frederick Gibberd, designer behind Harlow New Town in the late forties. Some people might not, with hindsight, think this a good wheeze but at the time it was thrusting and forward looking. The garden is interesting although one of the first things I did on arrival was to step soundly into the ordure of an as yet unspecified species. Cleve filmed it for your entertainment but I have decided that that is probably a step too far (pun intended, ha.ha!)

Instead here is picture of Cleve and Joe inappropriately touching a perkily buttocked statue.

We had a fine and fabulous day as you can see for yourselves very soon. Just need to enlist my elder son Archie to do a bit of fine tuning in the editing department so the finished film should be with you next week.

I am listening to Secret Love by Doris Day.

There is a guest blog of mine at the excellent Rochelle Greayer’s Studio G Blog here.

The picture is of  the lime walk at the Gibberd Garden. (x)

  1. You might notice my rather fetching headgear. This is a Basque beret that can be worn in a number of different ways. Without exception every style is more than a little foolish and causes a raising of the eyebrows from my family. But, if you can’t wear a silly hat on holiday, when can you wear one?.
  2. By “early in the morning” I mean about 8:30. We were on holiday so any earlier would have been silly. Especially as the Atlantic is damn cold. Also by “swim” I mean run into the sea, gasp, dive through a wave, gasp again, swear loudly, run out of the sea, stand shivering under an inadequately sized towel, watch one’s fingers drain of colour and swear never to be so foolish ever again.
  3. Some of you will remember my writing about the Highland Scottische last year. This year I was taught how to dance it by the very lovely Jill. I will not pretend to be an expert but I got round without falling over of treading on Jill’s toes. Or maybe I did and she is just too polite to tell me. I do know that it is a very exhausting dance and I was left panting like a wheezy mountain goat half way up an alp. This is it being danced, oddly, by some Russians.
  4. Including doing that thing where you stand on the side of the boat suspended by a harness above the briny deep. It is very exciting once you get over the scary ‘oh shit,I am going to drown’ bit.
  5. I did not get to build a sandcastle: one of the great regrets of my children getting older is that they do not greet this activity with as much enthusiasm as they did when they were six. I used to go on holiday with a proper spade so that we could build extravagantly moated constructions. Alas, they now prefer to loaf about or go off on more exotic holidays of their own.
  6. By ‘surfing’ I do not mean standing up and whizzing through the tunnels of thirty foot waves with the breeze rattling my extravagantly patterned boardshorts. I mean bodyboarding while wearing a sensibly thick wetsuit. This latter is generally a much more satisfying activity as one is less likely to get bruised or battered and it can be done in the company of smaller children.
  7. These were days when children were encouraged to do things like climb enormously high trees before such things were reconfigured as “dangerous” rather than “character building”. We were allowed to hang on to the back of a tractor when I was at school, it was a great treat and an added frisson was that we were inches above the viciously rotating blades of a mower. Nobody ever fell off.
  8. In my life I have caught (as far as I can remember): three trout, twelve pollack, seven mackerel, seventeen very small perch, one eel, one muddy carp and assorted shrimp, mussels and crayfish. I was also given a fish by a well meaning fellow fisherman which I then took home and claimed that I had caught it myself.
  9. And you did not get any really, just me saying “How lovely”. For the real thing try Cornflower Books. A person who also like footnotes so being (ix) might afford her some mild satisfaction. Although not as much as being number 2 on the Top Literarature Blogs list.
  10. I tried to get more words into the footnotes than the actual body of the post but felt that any more than this would be a bit forced. It may be that even this particular footnote is in itself forced but as very few of you will actually read this far it probably doesn’t really matter that much.