welsh hills again

Tomorrow I am to be visited by Zoe from Garden Hopping which is both a great pleasure and a cause of mild anxiety. Zoe is a serious gardener, someone who knows a lot about plants and gardens. I am a passionate gardener but so haphazard and self taught. My bookshelves groan with books about plants. I think about my garden, muse, sow, propagate but I am a rank amateur. I garden on a high bare hill, with a northwest wind and a stony soil. Much of what I tried to grow in my first year here failed. Now I propagate madly from what is here and what will thrive. There is no point in planning a thrillingly designed sort of space with rooms and great herbaceous borders and topiary, all of which I love. We are an ancient farmhouse on the side of a steep valley. The garden is a mixture of the veg patch, which has been gardened productively for generations, and a field. I plant trees for an orchard and daffodils round their feet. The trees are not twigs now, although they were a couple ...

I don't know whether it comes from having a September birthday, but I have always liked the end of summer. Ian went back to work this morning and I am working at home. This is a tricky one because the garden is groaning with produce and it is all calling to me. We are weighed down with courgettes and runner beans and squash and more runner beans and apples by the ton. I should clearly be chutney making, not emailing or making conference calls. And today more than ever the view keeps luring me outside and as soon as I am out there I find flowers to deadhead, weeding to be done, sweetpeas to pick. Inside there are cushions to be made and the imminent arrival of KittyB is making me very aware of the need to clean. We went visiting elder daughter this weekend and I have also come home with a recipe for marrow and ginger jam which I am assured works just as well with overgrown courgettes (I turned my back on them for half an hour, that's all I did. Honestly, they are like children,...

My lovely daughter is about to acquire her first house and her first garden. After years of wandering around gardens with her and having her say "But how do you know all this stuff?" she is about to start getting to know it herself. Well here to start her off are a few things I wish I had known about gardening when I started. 1. Things die. You will waste a lot of money on plants which turn up their toes. It is best to be philosophical about this and regard it as the opportunity to buy another plant. I used to beat myself up about all the things I put into my garden which simply disappeared. Now I realise that you can do things to minimise plant loss but sometimes it is just a mystery: you thought something would be happy in your garden and it isn't. Never mind. Move on. There are so many plants out there. Have a go with something else. But the business about things being happy in your garden is important and it took me years to garden to my soil and not to be led by glor...