GARDEN OF DELIGHTS

With the advent of summer, the garden has burst into life. I was careful to wait until the winter frosts were over to prune my bush. I have been back and forth to the garden centre to stock up with some leafy perennials to plug the holes in my herbaceous border: Fallopia, Clitoris, Cystitis ... not to mention Fuchsia. So many lovely bushes to choose from. I am having some trouble with moss in my cracks, that happens when they're not given a good scrubbing from one year to the next.



I am a bit of a green goddess, as you know. I even compiled the Gardener's Year Calendar for the Sunday Times one year. 1994 I think it was. Plants respond to me. I'm sure they're aware of a maternal presence taking care of them. When I moved in just over a year ago, the garden was sad and neglected, and a bit of a waste land. This summer, with very little extra work, it's been transformed into a bijou urban courtyard garden. The peonies have grown bigger and flowered earlier and more profusely than last year, after minimal pruning the climbing rose has joined the Ramblers' Association and gone off to explore next door's garden, and my fuchsia is about to bust out all over.

Is this Ena Harkness?

Although I don't have enough room to grow vegetables, I have got a busy little herb garden going. One pot of mint has turned into a small forest, and another trough holds a mixture of chives, parsley, basil, dill, coriander and rosemary all fighting to out-do each other. The aroma is delightful when you're sat out in the garden smoking a fag.

With the fallout from the financial crisis, growing your own makes ever more sense. Even Her Maj has got an allotment behind the coal shed at Buck House. You'd think her son would send her up an organic mixed bag from Cornwall once a week wouldn't you? I have just joined an organic fruit & vegbox scheme, for 11 euros I get a large mixed bag of produce, grown as nature intended in sunny Flanders and delivered to my office every Friday.


Gardening shows will perforce return to our screens, with hopefully some hunky new presenters. In 1996 I mourned with the nation's matrons when the saintly -- and yes, rather sexy (to women of a certain age) -- Geoff Hamilton went to the great potting shed in the sky. I never took to that ageing organic hippie Bob Flowerdew and his stringy pigtail. Monty Don had something of the dissolute aristocrat about him which I found strangely alluring. As for Alan Titchmarsh, his scone-like features and adenoidal whine on Ground Force were a small price to pay for the sight of Big Tommy Walsh in his boots and leather toolbelt, and his enigmatic silent helper, ponytailed Will ("Willie") Shanahan. Tommy's Willie was often in the background, but once or twice was allowed to say a few words. Being from the deep south of Ireland, he was incomprehensible. And of course there was that dimwit Kiwi bloke with the man-boobs, Charlie Dimmock, who I never really fancied.




My favourite gardener of all is that bit of posh totty Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall.(oh dear, I just know this is going to elicit a harrumph from Aunty M, apparently he thrust a fish in her face once). I can't resist an Old Etonian in wellies, especially when he's got shares in Tesco. He doesn't fart about with decorative stuff and goes straight for what you can eat, but the way he broke down in tears over those chickens made me want to ruffle his hair and clasp him to my bosom. With his air of a petulant spoiled brat, and the bossy Matron in me, we could do things with castor oil that Enid Blyton wouldn't have countenanced. Bedtime would mean bedtime, and no mistake young Master Hugh.


But I must settle for Gardener's Question Time on Radio 4. I dream of waking up and finding Tommy and his Willie giving my bush a good seeing-to, or Hugh with his huge cockerel flapping in my cottage garden. Instead I find a pair of tartan long johns hanging out to dry on my lavandula.