Picture it if you will... a terrified gardener quaking in his boots for the last four months at the thought of interrogation by dovegreyreader.
The poor thing, I felt dreadful to have caused such fear for the man who has single-handedly carpeted our garden with flowers this year.
There was Mr Higgledy Garden with his minder steering him away from the Sipsmith gin tent in the neighbouring walled garden as he was dragged coaxed around the corner with little words of encouragement from our side... 'She's loooooovely..she won't eat you...' (thank you to Alice from The Sight of Morning for this) and what did he do...
Sat on the sofa and took to it all as if born to such gardening greatness and we had a whale of a time...apart from the moment when my potted cobaea scandens was declared a disgrace...
'It should be eight feet tall by now...in fact I wish you hadn't brought it...'
'They're everso much bigger up the side of my greenhouse,' I stuttered before moving swiftly on....and they really nearly are.
Benjamin Ranyard, cut-flower guru, plantsman, hilarious blog-writer, the man who makes a Gertrude Jekyll border entirely possible with £10's worth of seeds, and the creator with Cathy St Germans of one of the most visited and talked-about corners of Port Eliot Festival this year...the walled garden border.
In the light of those pictures my first question seemed a really obvious one...
'Why did you send Cathy St Germans seeds that have grown four feet high whilst my identical ones have barely made it to one?'
The answer of course may lie in the ten foot wall.
We covered the lot...
Challenges (weather)
Favourites (cornflowers),
Lunar gardening (no, no and thrice no apparently) ,
The hand-written letters that come with each seed order (quicker than a printer)
Watering (envy about my spring supply)
Feeding (soil does the job & plants know what to do)
Thinning (be ruthless and ignore the piercing scream from each little seedling)
Weeding (try your best)
Will there be a book (probably not)
What can we so now (plenty)
..and plenty more, and we laughed and generally it was all not even the least bit terrifying for Mr Higgledy in the end and a huge pleasure for the rest of us.
Everyone left with a packet of free seeds and plenty of people bought the collections, whilst Mr H left with a weight off his shoulders, a knitted gnome and some Knitsuke flowers of his own just in case of sudden crop failure or something...
Thank you Ben for facing down the fear, we loved you.
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