From invited editors to garden festivals

I've never seen before Gardening world And never at the NEC, although I have once observed Monty Don to go to Japan in a travel show to go to Japan. Until recently, the only connection that I had with gardening was once again a lawn. A neighbor saw me lifeless on the floor and inspected the aspiring grass blades, assumed that I had a heart attack and called an ambulance.

What my spontaneous curiosity aroused about BBCGWL was that my coastal barn Rhoda Parry from @Coastalgardenclub, which helped me with my garden, helped a photo of her show limit, a 3 MX 3 m act that was built there. Rhoda and I live on the edge of the Rye Harbor Nature Reserve in an expansion of Romney Marsh and the world's second largest shingle bench in the world to Cape Canaveral. We are both former magazine editors: she edited Country Homes and interiors, I started shopping and edited GQ. She told me how she went through an early open open plan office to deliver a copy of me and my baby, and I was around with my bike and smoked a spliff. Awarded processing in action.

If our magazine careers were very different, our gardens are similar. Both are part of the fields of Flint pebble stones between Winchelsea Beach and Rye Harbor, an area that is so large and recognizable that they can recognize it from vacation rays over their heads. The most famous garden in the landscape is of course the filmmaker and author Derek Jarman's Prospect Cottage in Dungeness, but there are many other interesting gardens in the region, such as Marta Nofickas Brillant Coast Guard in the jury gap, with its structures of recessed and resumed wood.

I came to the area for the first time in 1987 when my girlfriend and I drove over the Dungeness estate, and I noticed that words raised on the side of a black wood fishing hut were raised and went to the research. The owner sat in the anteroom in an unexplained window and wrote. Back then, Prospect Cottage was largely unknown.

In those days, most of the houses were down there in the only desert of Europe's lean huts, but others also had what kind of garden installations could have overturned that parts of old trawlers were scattered. It was Jarman who defined the shingle garden as a art installation.

Since then I have spent a lot of time in Rye Bay. In addition to the landscape, I like the real and fictional story of smugglers such as the Hawkhurst gang and Russell Thorndyke's Dr. Syn. I like that the beaches were locations for locations Follow this camel further and David Bowies ashes to Ashes Video. I love that people I grew up on, like Paul McCartney, Tom Baker from Doctor who And Spike Milligan lived nearby.

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I bought a small white bungalow, Pebbles, on Winchelsea Beach, to register, and now the people stay there too, but I never really tried to do something with the garden myself. A number of friendly locals took care of it before, but last year I realized that I had time and the opportunity to be involved a little more. The Damascener knowledge that a garden is more than 6,000 miles away in the Japanese city of Okayama during a two-hour train stop in the Japanese city when my girlfriend, she and I jumped into a bus and drove into the Korakuen garden.

The beautiful well -groomed park was the quietest and most well -kept surroundings that I had experienced. It only remembers remembering it. Wide fields of water lilies, tiny dams, the streams around worn jumps and water flowers and plants. There was a small hill that didn't look real, and pretty much everything was green, which I found as a very relaxing color.

The most obvious greens in my shingle garden in pebbles are the cowpetersley and various other wild plants such as sea kohl that occur naturally. At some point I had a full border of nettles that stored like an impressive army between me and my neighbors. Occasional poppy flowers and Hollyhocks appear, there is a massive plant on the front deck, the white butterflies and some tubs from lavender and mint attract, but when I saw on Instagram what Rhoda had done for the gardener association as part of her training, I asked if she was acting another project.

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The association is an organization that enables people to learn while they get their hands dirty under the direction of experienced gardeners with their own amazing places. I now remember to do it myself.

For Pebbles, Rhoda created a plan of what the garden should look like, decks with different plants that work here below the conditions, and together with the local building contractor Don Cassidy and the Peasmarshimkeeper Geordie Paul, we built hazel hurdles from woven wood to give the guests more privacy. Don cut a load of railway sleepers for a new way and Simon from Walthamstow Rock and Roll Book Club delivered a massive fire, which I bought on Ebay to his neighbors.

Rhoda, my eldest son and I started to remove eager grass and weeds from the shingle. The coastal weather is so changeable that from March to October you can get hot sun and heavy rain within a few hours and only grow or die in extremely fast cycles. Oddly enough, I enjoyed the trip to the garden center – roared huge sacks of fertilizers in trolleys, which felt satisfactory and vague and real work. While you can leave the innovations and the colored rubber boots, a large part of the kit is fascinating. Years ago I would be in record shops. So many secateurs, rakes and hose attachments. So many plants that look healthy and inviting before I managed to expose them to the sea air and fog. When I stared on the colorful photographs on seed packages, I remembered that I was fascinated by you as a child.

A few weeks ago, the author of mental health, Sam Delaney, dived and said: “Do you have someone who makes your garden? It somehow looks chaotic, but you can say that something is going on here.” What really sounded. I was thrilled because I had just spent three hours to weigh the shingle with my Japanese garden tool.

Something that is not chaotic is the BBCGWL at NEC: a long slow drift from older people in non-branded clothing, white cardigans, flower dresses and soft shoes that move into a huge area with stands and gardens. The numbers and pace are like Glastonbury and the customers remind me of Queen Mary 2 in Southampton. Such a large amount contradicts the calm and loneliness that I enjoy in the pebble garden. I am not sure if these are my people – I would still feel more comfortable if I talked about new orders or the Droyds.

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Someone pushes a brochure from the Gardeners Journal and tells me that it contains “Nick Baileys plant list”. I keep it because his show garden looks like it was done for Prince, so many shades by purple and mauve. Like John Peels, the list is fifty fifty in sounds 40 years ago, exotic names and wonderful creations.

Monty Donty Donty Don Drifts by, followed by cameras, a Hollywood body guard and a peloton of fascinated fans looked like a lost member of Led Zeppelin.

I think Rhoda. Your limit to the beach garden of Superblooms has won a golden earnings evaluation. I talked through the familiar from looking bed made of sand, shingle, broken sea washed car and rusted iron. Gomphrena Pullohella from South America. I am more satisfied when I look at it, I'm more excited than anything I have ever seen. “And it is always easier to understand why.