In June, the award-winning Val Bourne will be leading a talk at GROW London about gardening without chemicals. In this quick-fire interview Val gives a fantastic insight into her own gardening habits.
Describe your garden/gardening style
Organic cottage garden style, heavily planted, to provide all-year round interest from the first snowdrop at Christmas to the last rose of the year.
Favourite London garden/outside space?
My own! When I come back from a week away at Chelsea I want to kiss the ground beneath my feet. Failing that, I love the atmosphere of the Arts and Crafts garden at Rodmarton Manor near my home in Gloucestershire. It has a balcony for romancing and long borders that dip down to an Ernest Barnsley summerhouse covered with Veilchenblau roses that fade to shot-silk blue against the grey, sun-warmed stone.
Guilty gardening pleasure?
Buying plants that I don’t need and have no room for. Somehow I can’t stop myself. I also visit nurseries - sometimes far off my real route.
Which tool couldn’t you be without?
My rubber rake, you can rake off the leaves without damaging the plants underneath - our cottage is surrounded by lots of beech trees. You can smarten a vegetable plot by raking through it. Everyone should have one.
Who or what makes you laugh?
The Best Beloved, a man meticulous in everything except his personal appearance.
Favourite book?
I’m part Cornish, on my mother’s side, and I came from a bookish family. Daphne du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn still holds a special place in my heart because we stopped there on the way to Mousehole every year. I read it aged 10 and I still adore the Bodmin landscape - winter or summer.
Most unusual thing you’ve found in your garden?
Spring Cottage was derelict and the garden was extremely weedy when we came here about eight years ago. Digging it was quite an experience because whole iron bedsteads had been buried underground. We unearthed a pigsty floor and we also discovered that the property had been called the ‘hovel in the waste’ on a 1742 map. We have a Roman lavabo in our stone wall, but the last owner filled it with concrete and there was plenty more under the garden.
Flowers or veg?
Both - and fruit. I constantly add more flowers, but I’m committed to growing all my soft fruit, a large part of my top fruit and all my vegetables. It’s healthy and it satisfies my thrifty side inherited from the Yorkshire branch of my family.
Biggest gardening disaster?
I’ve had so many! Cold Aston is cold, really cold, and silver plants hate it so I’ve killed off legions of them here. I’ve also bought Paeonia rockii three times, at vast expense, and each time I’ve fallen on it. I think I’m not meant to have it.
Life motto?
No is short for not yet.
When you’re in your garden, what do you spend most of your time doing?
I’m a tweaker - I deadhead, I prune and I primp. I also spend half an hour everyday just looking, on average, trying to notice something new. I often stand and stare.
See Val at GROW London this June, 20 - 22. Details will be confirmed soon, so do check back to see what will be on at the fair.