About

Hello and welcome to my blog. Six years ago, after having Bel [my second child], I decided it was time to stop faffing about and actually instigate a change in career direction. I had the gardening bug, had done a number of horticulture/garden design courses [including the RHS General and the first year of a Garden Design Degree], had already started on the self-employed path [by working as a freelance graphic designer since having the first child]…everything was in the right place. The plunge came when I put a small advert in a local paper offering my services as a border/plant specialist lady gardener. The response was amazing, took me completely by surprise, and formed a great client base that began my career in horticulture and design.

Since then I have had to reduce the client base to allow more time for other projects, but I do still garden for a handful of these original clients. The gardening round is very special to me, it’s a great opportunity to work and develop real gardens and it gives me the space and fresh air to think of new ideas. It also keeps me fit, hands-on and helps with the cashflow. When I am not gardening I am based at home in what I call my ‘office’ which is more like a utility out-building [six yards from my back door] of about 4m x 4m. It’s quite cosy.  My desk, home to my beloved geriatric Mac, is squeezed next to the dryer [noisy but warming] and is where I spend the school day hours working on garden design projects and dreaming up ideas on how to get more people interested in growing fruit in their gardens…in interesting modern/contemporary ways. Oh yes, I forgot to mention, I have developed a bit of a thing for fruit.

One brainwave [I had while gardening] led me to exhibiting a fruit-themed back to back garden in 2009 at the Tatton RHS Flower Show titled Be fruitful. Loved the whole experience, which was certainly stressful [faced a few fears in the process] and completely exhilarating at the same time. By exhibiting I amazingly got to design the lovely Antonio Carluccio’s garden too…see here and here. I’m very honored. And I would definately exhibit at a show again. Admittedly, I have been relentlessly working away at trying to raise funds to exhibit a bigger fruit-themed garden since we [well the husband really] dismantled Be fruitful; but all this economic downturn has made me put it on hold for the time being.

Together with the maintenance and design I also get involved with projects that go through to the landscaping phase. I project manage as well as muscle on down to get the dirty work [pick axing, barrowing, skip-filling, trench digging] off to a flying start. As a consequence I have bigger biceps than my husband, have nightmares of flabby arm syndrome and look jealously at anyone with slender ones.

Fruit has now become a bit of a passion and needless to say, many of the things I write about will be… fruit-related articles. I will aim to give a mixture though, with informative ‘how-to’ articles, plant profiles as well as write-ups about what I’ve been up to or places I have visited … all linked to the world of horticulture and design.

One last thing. I am also the founder of Fruitshare, a relatively new and young initiative that sets out to offer an online platform for people wanting to share their surplus garden-grown fruit. In autumn 2010 it was re-launched in association with Richard Borrie [ace guy] from Orange Pippin and we are hoping that each season from now on it will grow and grow in popularity; fingers crossed.

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