- “I could have listened to another hour of that”
- “I have always been meaning to visit that garden and I definitely will now.”
- “I didn’t even know this garden existed.”
- “Sorry I cried.”
- “Sorry I whooped.” (ps these two last comments weren’t from the same person and weren’t in response to the same piece. That would have been just plain odd…!)

It was a lovely evening on Wednesday at the Canterbury Festival, reading my garden poems and showing the photographs I’d taken this year – and joined by SJ Butler and Will Sutton who were reading garden poems and prose, with Will providing live music. I don’t think ANYONE has wished I would talk about gardens for longer before…

And also thanks to everyone who asked when the book was coming out. It’s still in progress, but in the meantime you can read my garden poems and stories here.

ps Here’s a photo of me as a teenager I shared on Wednesday. I’m not so old that my childhood photos are all sepia but it was taken to help publicise my parents’ Elizabethan herb garden, Herbs From The Hoo, which was open to the public and, I’m sure, one of the reasons I’m so fascinated by the public/private tension between gardens. I don’t look very happy, but would you have done, aged 13 and wearing your mum’s friend’s old nightie!!