Letters to garden makers

Dear Monty, It seems I am almost as well known as you - well perhaps not. As you know Monty I have been writing to you for some years now and it seems that a few other people are reading my correspondence. I will be opening the garden under the www.ngs.org.uk  and the editor of our local paper picked up that fact from the 'Yellow Book' and also read the blog. So the long and short  (mainly short) of it is that a telephone interview took place and a photographer was dispatched. The most painful part of the process was the photographer - he posed me with shears and secateurs in the most unnatural poses, and trying to smile for such a grumpy person as myself was a challenge - so I ended up looking like an elderly demented rabbit. I'm not sure if during your filmed and photographed life you have ever been asked to hold your stomach in - but there I was trying to smile whilst straining the few abdominal muscles I have hidden under the rolls. The garden is not loo...

Dear Monty, I have begun to clear the debris of Winter and the new borders have been planted. Spring is like a lit fuse, everything is building up to an explosion. Isn't it strange that we forget what the garden looks like when in its fullness ? Every year though there are changes, plants have moved about - found their own preferred place - and then there are the plants that have matured and formed larger clumps. I have been resisting the temptation to be too tidy, because this would preclude the plants wishes to grow where they prefer. It is a struggle though to get the balance right. I am trying to make a garden that has its own sense of place - and have been reading visiting and learning about what makes such a garden. Sometimes I think I am being pretentious - but then I think of such places as Derek Jarman's garden and am suddenly reinvigorated to keep trying. I'm looking forward to May and the explosion. Paul.