Tell us about A Flower Garden for Pollinators and why you wrote it
My priorities as a gardener have evolved over time, and I hope with this new book to encourage others to explore another perspective and recalibrate what feels most important about our gardens. I believe having a beautiful garden can go hand in hand with creating a space that delivers equally for the pollinators and other beneficial insects so vital to a healthy and vibrant ecosystem.
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What did you learn from writing it?
For this book, I became completely absorbed in the entomological aspects of the subject, poring over academic papers reporting the results of trials examining insect numbers. Learning exactly where, how and when they find forage was compelling and enlightening.
If there’s one piece of advice you’d like to share from the book, what would it be?
Ideally a couple of things: that we should adjust our perspective as gardeners, accepting that the creatures with which we share our gardens have needs that outweigh our own. Also, the importance of providing plants that not only produce forage in every season, but shelter and places to lay eggs. By adopting a holistic, year-round approach, one can really make a difference.
I’ll read anything about/by…
So many writers. But Beth Chatto, Dr Oliver Rackham, Sue Stuart-Smith and Sarah Raven spring to mind because you really hear their unique voices. I also love an opinionated seed or nursery catalogue, such as Bob Brown’s for Cotswold Garden Flowers.
The books I’m currently reading I’m wallowing in
Jekka McVicar’s wealth of herby knowledge in her latest offering, 100 Herbs to Grow, and enjoying the new title by Polly Nicholson, The Tulip Garden. And I recently bought a copy of The Floricultural Cabinet (published in 1837) at an auction. It’s filled with fascinating and strangely unchanged gardening advice, and the colours overlaying the engravings remain as richly saturated as the day they were painted.
What sparked your interest in gardening?
My father was, and my mother still is, potty about plants. Visiting gardens, nurseries and garden centres together and simply being in the garden while my father planted and pruned was the basis of my rather nerdy but happy childhood and laid the foundation for my own horticultural obsessions.
What is your current garden like?
I’m grappling with the largest plot I’ve had in a lifelong series of gardens, so it’s still very much a work in progress. My priority remains trying things out, so my planting choices may strike some as lacking cohesion. But the self-contained walled garden is restored and productive, the borrowed view over the Cotswold fields ever-changing and snowdrops carpet the ground each winter.
Can you share your biggest gardening mistake or failure?
I’ve still not cracked the common pitfall of sowing too much in one go and producing more than we can eat. I love growing courgettes and aim to pick them small. But work commitments invariably take me away for several days at the wrong moment and I return to find they’ve swelled to the size of a mammoth marrow.
What’s your guilty gardening secret?
I’m always chasing my tail. Seed and bulb orders go in late and so sowing and planting is often delayed. My record for tardy tulip planting is February. I had to discard a few, but most flowered surprisingly well.
What’s your favourite garden or landscape to visit?
I’m so fortunate in having opportunities to visit a wide range of gardens across the country. Each one offers fresh inspiration and pleasure on many levels. While a rose garden may make me swoon, I’m often happiest walking through a local bluebell wood or stopping to admire the froth of cow parsley in the verges.
What else are you up to at the moment?
Filming for BBC Gardeners’ World and the RHS shows, and it looks set to be a busy year travelling to literary festivals. I’m planning to hold a series of talks and workshops from my corner of the Cotswolds, where I thought I’d also try offering cut flowers, grown in the walled garden. Flower farming has always interested me, and this will be a small-scale artisanal attempt to dip my toe in the water.