Letters to garden makers

Dear Monty, A pin hole is hardly noticeable in the everyday rush of our lives, but even a pinhole of light if detected can begin to open up our minds to something far greater. Sara Jane Trebar and her battle to save Farm Terrace Allotments   www.farmterrace.btck.co.uk   is for me one such speck of light in an ever darker world. The trouble is how many people see the universe in that speck ? What makes humans healthy ? Is it all about a man made system heavily reliant on consuming  more resources, or is it to do with what nourishes the soul as well as the body ? If you want to follow researched and validated information on health promotion then there is plenty of evidence out there for what makes us healthy. If our motives are truly about wanting to promote health and prevent (as far as is possible) ill health and so reduce the burden on the NHS, how does building over allotments contribute to that ? The air that we all breathe requires nature and green sp...

Dear Monty, Today is a bright and beautiful day. On this day we all have our mood lifted by the sun, by the sharpness of contrast between light and shade. I walked around the garden just letting time melt into the now of the moment. I have been watching the 'Great British Garden Revival' and although I have enjoyed the series so far, and have been reminded that many of the aspects/styles of gardens shown have a merit of their own, it seems to me the thing missing is the role that gardens have in easing the troubled mind. Light and shade is almost a mirror of our mood. In other words the natural organic world reflects what goes on inside us. What more proof do we need that we are so intricately linked to the whole living planet ? I have dark and shady anxious negative thoughts, which are displaced by the light of the eternal moment. We took dog for a walk in Craig y Nos Country Park enjoying more of the light, letting it cast out ...

Dear Monty, More floods, the road almost washed away, the garden boggy underfoot. (I suspect that Longmeadow has been under water too.) But instead of feeling depressed by it, I know that it will come back to life. Inspired by  www.blackberrygarden.co.uk  and  patientgardener.wordpress.com  I have decided to show you what the garden looks like from different points at this time of the year. I offer it up in all its messiness. Apologies for the quality of the photographs, they were taken in the gloom on my phone. The box in pots have got a form of blight, but I like the colour. The terraced area has old concrete paving the joints between which have self sown with daisies - erigeron karvinskianus (with thanks to Anne Wareham) and violets The pieris full of red tinged flower buds Most of my terracotta pots do not survive but again I don't mind the flaking, it takes several seasons before they are replaced Tatty fence This was where the pine w...