About Me

A few things I’m not. I’m not a professional garden designer, although a neighbour has just asked me to design her garden because mine has been causing quite a buzz over the last couple of years. I’m not prescriptive about what you should and shouldn’t do in your garden – it’s all about self-expression. However, I will give you heaps of tips and plenty of inspiration and encouragement. And lastly, I’m not immune to struggles with anxiety, so have found gardening helps enormously with improving my mood…and when other people enjoy my front garden, it makes them smile too.

A few things I am (or have been). I’ve been a writer and editor on magazines and newspapers for too many years to count. I’ve written for titles including ELLE, Marie Claire, British Vogue, You, The Times and The Daily Telegraph and have been a columnist for Japanese Vogue and the Telegraph Magazine. Often, my work was in the fashion and beauty world, steeped in all things sartorial. Part of my job description was being able to spot McQueen at seventy paces and a chypre fragrance in a single sniff. Now, I like the fact I can tell the difference between a Belicia tulip from a Ballerina, and relish the scent of narcissi and lilies as they bloom.

Not that I started out horticulturally clueless. My mum and dad were gardeners through and through, although in approach, yin and yang. My mum’s woodland patch was all about softness and spilling, trailing and tangling, while my dad aligned red geraniums, blue lobelia and white alyssum in soldier-straight schemes of the kind Buckingham Palace rolled out for a jubilee.

Drought of '76

During the great drought of ‘76, in Heath Robinson style, dad hooked up the bath and all our sinks to pipes diverted from the drains - wastewater flooded the lawn with the faint whiff of Imperial Leather. While neighbours’ gardens resembled the Namib Desert, ours looked like Wimbledon’s Centre Court, moments before the first match. With a hosepipe ban in place, my mother feared we’d be reported.

For my parents, gardening wasn’t art. It was simply engrained in the everyday. Most Sunday lunchtimes dad would casually shout he was ‘just going up Wisley’ as if he was off to the Nag’s Head for a pint. He was a member of the Alpine Society and the Dahlia Society, and I guess the RHS was in my DNA. After all, my parents always spoke of plants in the Latin, even though they hailed from Islington before it was posh. At school, when I was about six, I was asked to finish the name of a little yellow spring flower that started with the syllable ‘Prim’. I volunteered ‘Primula vulgaris’.

My dad died in his garden. He collapsed at the spot of my old swing where my challenge had been to fly so high I could touch ripening apples with my toes. Now, when I garden, it transports me to simpler times…when dad cut dahlias of a misty morning for me to take to school, specimens that looked like Elizabeth Taylor’s hats that I carried at arm’s length for fear of the earwigs. 

In those days, front gardens were big (even if they were small). They mattered. They also helped with drainage. As my horticultural hero, Diarmuid Gavin pointed out to me, since so many front gardens are now paved, water doesn’t drain so well, which impacts flood risk. 



Kerb appeal

Me and my husband, Paul, have lived in our Victorian terraced house for 18 years and front garden-wise, for the first decade, we pretty much went with what was there…a boring hedge and an aged wall. Eventually, when we had spare funds, we decided to boost the property’s kerb appeal by building a new wall and laying a period-style tile path. We planted a prettier hedge and for a while, that’s how we left it. Neat. But nothing head-turning. 

But recently, I decided our little neighbourhood garden deserved more love. So I cleared out the hedge and planted it out. The first perennials were a fail – they quickly muscled in and outgrew their welcome. But gradually, I found a few that brought showy shape while respecting boundaries, such as lily turf, with its candles of mauve flowers and arching, evergreen foliage. 

In galvanised metal window boxes, I leaned into the lavish leafage of heucheras, which come in a spectrum of shades from acid green to shimmering copper. To these, I added annuals that burgeoned and trailed, especially ‘Black Velvet’ petunias, deeply stylish and quite the revelation.

Like Googlebox for fish...

Now, so many people stop to chat when I'm gardening. I've learned more about the neighbours in two months than I had in 12 years, including the fact one couple has a koi pond that starts in the garden and flows under a glass kitchen floor. Apparently, the koi gather to gawp when the humans sit on the sofa, a bit like Googlebox for fish.

I love my little front garden and I change the theme every season (I’m not advocating you do the same, I just like experimenting with growing different plants, particularly in pots). Gardening, however inventive or simple, is a celebration of nature and slower living. Of patience. Of optimism. An ongoing project, always demanding your eye and care. And when you care for a front garden, it brings joy to your neighbours and the community.

Please join me in my mission and watch us grow