Letters to garden makers

Dear Monty, The first egg of the morning The first grapes eaten by the chickens as a reward The first red admiral The first robin with his autumnal song. The first motorbike off-roading on the coal tip The first argument in the street The first barking of dogs The first vacuum cleaning of the day. Champions - Where are they ? Are they at they at the NATO summit ? Are politicians really the deciders of our fate ? What is the beauty of the morning ? Who is the bright and morning star ? Lift up your heads o you gates. I sit under my pagoda on my throne - surrounded by a drifting ethereal snow of willow herb seeds. I look up at mackerel clouds drifting towards Obama and the heads of state. John Kingdon once commented that the coal tip garden looks like a haven of peace. Yet unsilenced trial bikes fill the air with loud farts, and neighbours fire up electronic gardening tools and petrol driven mowers. The dog breeders chiwawa's snap, ...

Dear Monty, 23/8/14  Like a spoilt child; my mood was unbendingly fractious. The root was selfishness - a hard weed to grub out - even if you tug - it snaps and regrows. 24/8/14  Inwardly I wept - deep sighing sobs for the simple beauty of glistening blue hydrangea florets randomly growing through the blue-green leaves of the hypericum, a blending not of conscious will but a small miracle of early light and dew, and a lack of pruning. I like the slightly indistinct photos that my phone produces, but this does not capture the blue I was speaking of. I am leaning towards blending rather than creating specimens in trophy cabinets, and anyway the garden seems to lend itself to this, just like the coal tip above. Blending may seem on first glance to be a dangerous strategy - the distinctiveness of the plant lost, and indeed the risk of etiolation and the weakening of the plant making it more vulnerable to disease. But 'It ain't necessarily so' as the song r...

Dear Monty,       The year whips past at speed, taking time out of time I contemplate the coal tip garden and the upcoming Orchid Festival at :  gardenofwales.org.uk  6th and 7th Sept. This time I am not alone, I shall be in the company of the talented botanical artist  Polly O'Leary :   blog.pollyoleary.co.uk . I met Polly last year and she took time to have a chat and visit my stand, if you come along you are in for a treat. Inspiration came this past week from watching a programme on BBC 4 about Chinese art. Watching that somehow connected me to heaven. The flow of a calligrapher's brush on the paper scroll - the sheer beauty of it - a humble and contemplative act carried out like a ballet - a visual dance. It seemed like a connection from spirit to hand and from hand to paper. Unlike this laboured work - I can only see the cairn as a pimple now (thanks to Anne Wareham X) I also sung a song of joy and melancholy readi...

Dear Monty, The reason my life as an artist and garden maker is really a fantasy, is because for 5 days a week I am a nurse. The title 'nurse' does not fit the traditional role of a man. To nurse implies to enfold, to take care of, to love and to feed ; these were always seen as female qualities. I cannot feed or enfold physically, but nurses both male and female are now less and less able to love and care as 'systems' replace conversations, and procedures are dictated by prompts on computer programs. We bow to the almighty digit. If you want to see where it is all going wrong - look there. Nurses, patients and doctors are human with emotions rational and irrational - with beliefs, passions, prejudices and even loathings - we are a soup - no-one is infallible. The best we can do is listen to one another, more important than that is to have the time to do so - which these days is seen as inefficiency. The new diktats of monitoring and efficiency mean that to ...

Dear Monty, 2/8/14  It is 24 years since the birth of my daughter Rebecca on a warm bright Isle of Wight morning, the sun bouncing off the sea and light flooding the delivery room with a golden glow. This morning in the coal tip garden I sit reflecting on the speed of life, whilst drinking in drops of sunlight in between the rain. How long it has been - this pursuit of happiness.                                                       'Who is this that obscures my plans                                                         with words without knowledge?' Well it's me. I know the plans, I feel them inside me, but I meddle too much. The river flows but I try and swim upstream with tired arms. I s...