My life in plants: small triumphs. Many disasters…
Writing The Woman Who Got her Spark Back got me thinking about plants. My main character, Celia, has the greenest fingers in her Glasgow neighbourhood – and that’s why she runs a houseplant hospital from her flat.
In truth though, I have had a very chequered history in horticultural terms. Which is weird because…
My mum was a fantastic gardener.
I grew up in a tiny village called Goose Eye in West Yorkshire. We lived in a small terraced house where I barely registered Mum’s herbaceous border crammed with lupins of all colours. She grew these from seed – either gathered from the previous year’s blooms or collected in the wild.
You know how, when you’re a kid, you take your parents’ talents for granted? I’d love a display like that now. It seems like magic, what my mum could do with a handful of seeds. However, thus inspired…
…When I left home I bought a single houseplant for my bedsit.
Obviously, it died within a week. At 17 I could barely look after myself – I basically lived on toast for three years in that Dundee bedsit. That poor spider plant had no chance.
Later, in London, on a narrowboat on the canal…
Finally, in my mid-twenties, I grew things! Geraniums, mainly, on the roof of the boat I shared with my partner of the time. I have an enduring nostalgia for canal boats and brilliant tomato-red geraniums in pots. Honestly, even I can’t kill those things.
Then came my first flat…
… on the edge of Hackney downs in East London. I’m sorry to say – as I know it’s virtually impossible now – that lots of us in our twenties could afford to buy flats in ‘80s London. Mine even had a shared garden out the back. But I never once went into it.
However… windowboxes!
I’m not sure why I bought these and wanted to grow things – but I did and it was so easy! My window boxes were crammed with (again) red geraniums and deep blue lobelia. I was single for a while and poured all my love and attention onto these plants, watering them daily. You could see the explosion of brilliant red and blue from way across the park.
Then I let them all die.
I’d met Jimmy, who I’d go on to marry and have a family with, which was great! But not so great for my windowboxes. Within weeks of this new relationship blossoming, my poor plants were dead.
We left London for Scotland where our garden was huge…
In our small country town, this garden the talk of the place – not because it looked glorious but because at certain points our unkempt lawn was literally waist high. ‘I was thinking, I could try my lawnmower on it, on its side,’ announced a concerned neighbour. We had a baby and twin toddlers at this point so who cared about gardens? It was an achievement to slam an edible meal on the table. To even wear matching shoes. Although at certain points Jimmy would batter the garden into submission and grow lettuce! Potatoes! And carrots the size of your littlest fingernail!
And now to a Glasgow flat…
…where, out the back, there is a shared garden. I do venture into it, if only to hang out washing (it’s basically just a big rectangle of grass). But in our home, Jimmy has embraced the houseplant craze wholeheartedly.
Now our living room is filled with verdant leaves.
My husband tends them lovingly and they exude health. Look at this lot!
And these, on our kitchen windowsill!
Finally I am surrounded by beautiful plants. And I don’t dare touch them.
I hardly dare look at them, actually – in case I wither them with a glance.
The Woman Who Got Her Spark Back is published by Boldwood on June 7
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