Letters to garden makers

Dear Monty, Life is full of opinions and we have to filter them through our view of the world, but that has its limitations. There is no one universal human point of view of course. There is a painful truth in these words from the book of Hebrews written by the apostle Paul : 'What is obsolete and ageing will soon disappear' So I look for an enduring city. My garden is a sanctuary whether that is right or wrong I do not know, but surely that is true for a good many of us, even if we let others into it from time to time. I came home again home again jiggity jig to an imbalanced sanctuary. I realised that I like straight lines and a degree of 'tidiness'. Oh no ! Oh yes ! So my temporary solution to this is to plant some old laths in the ground like sentinels. I have also begun to see that I myself have descended into some kind of imbalance. 21/10/13 It took only one day in the world of preventative medicine, and my soul shrunk back into a hard stone ...

Dear Monty, 12/10/13  The day of our 28th anniversary is spent on Exmoor. Retaining a vital connection takes effort. We visited longstanding friends in their noble thatched cob farmhouse. We walked and talked in the rain walking the garden and the lanes surrounding the farm. The building is ancient, and takes up a lot of time, effort and money to gradually restore it as they can afford, but it has a kind of integrity in its crumbling cob walls. It has stood the test of time and hardship. I am impressed with Richard and Ruth, they have an attitude of humility which is rare to find, certainly in me. Ruth has plans for her garden which include a sculpture wall, she has already painted the stepped wall at the highest boundary point above the cottage in readiness to attach driftwood, old farm machine parts and pots. Both Richard and Ruth are artists who like me had to drop out of the art scene in order to survive, because our work was not in the 'loop' which a...

Dear Monty, We walked Toff the whippet on the opposite side of the valley. The 'Diamond Park' is the reclaimed site of an old drift mine, which produced high grade anthracite. The old coal tip is now full of devil's bit scabious, and festooned in small tortoiseshell butterflies. I counted 14, but there were more. This year the Powys County Council left the grass uncut in the middle of the sloping hillside. The soil here is very poor, only about an inch thick with a layer of clay, shale and coal waste beneath. It is very boggy after the rain. This area has regenerated over the last 20 years and you can now see typical meadow flora. Earlier in the year there was a proliferation of marsh orchids and ragged robin. Now blond grasses and a swathe of purple blue scabious make this former industrial site beautiful, with young oak, ash, alder, birch and willow getting a foothold. My black hill shone like gold in the early morning sun. I have to reclaim my garden fro...