Matthew Applebys gardening blog

1. Chelsea favourites update. Bradley-Hole now odds on. Ulf evens. They are next door to each other on the main avenue (see pic). Balston’s is thought to be too similar to his last one (Telegraph in 1999 ‘old school’). Kate Gould is an each-way bet. Adam Frost’s is blossomy.

2. The Fleming’s Australian garden looks amazing on the rock bank (see pics). Some others lack leaves and flowers.

3. Original Chelsea Flower Show exhibitor Blackmore & Langdon insist they have shown at all the RHS shows. In the Chelsea Centenary Celebration book by Brent Elliott the RHS historian says B&L haven;t been at all the shows. So I rang up RHS. BE says he was wrong in the book and B&L are the only ever-presents.

4. In the marquee, I wonder why Hillier use the same obelisk every year (see pic)? There’s a lot of 100th memorabilia. The security guard, Chris, is quite droll if you’re ever at the London gate. Nigel Dunnett is the first to be allowed a backdrop (London citscape) against the marquee.

5. Royals: As well as Zara Phillips at John Deere’s stand and Harry at Sentabale’s (in the afternoon post 3pm with the Queen and Prince Philip) Camilla’s younger brother Mark Shand with London charities Elephant Family and Habitat for Humanity will launch their Animal Ark initiative on Chelsea’s Sloane Street at The Rib Room Bar & Restaurant, Jumeirah Carlton Tower, by unveiling a life-sized pair of elephant structures beautifully decorated by local award-winning florists Nikki Tibbles Wild at Heart.

6. Rock royalty Liam Gallagher, Rod Stewart, Ringo Starr and Lily Allen are also going. B&Q will have an A-lister but I’m told it’s not Harry (during the morning anyway). They got Gwyneth Paltrow a couple of years ago.

It’s not Emily Lloyd, who I last saw a few years ago at the insalubrious Orwell in north London. But she’s is at SeeAbility’s Chelsea garden.  Joanna Lumley is opening two gardens inc one for M&S, while Helen Mirren is launching a plant. Pensioners will have a cream tea at Nicholsons. Deborah Meaden will launch product of the year. The First Touch garden will feature Martine McCutcheon and Ortis Deeley. Stockton Drilling will have Helena Bonham Carter and Michael Vaughan on the stand. Owen Paterson might launch bars on bringing plant material into the UK.
Ringo will be at the WaterAid garden.

7. Owen Paterson (who might be unpopular after his stance on keeping neonic pesticides in the face of bee-loving gardeners) is set to announce some plant health restrictions at CFS. Maybe not being able to stick plants in your luggage? A good tale I think. Tree imports is great story too. But too difficult for wider media to get I think.

8. A few Chelsea invites, to Andrew Wilson lunch at Bluebird and some fringe things. Also Hort Matters launch at Parliament.
I’ve written dozens of Chelsea stories for a wider audience over the last few years.  This year, Harry, touts, Diarmuid etc. The gardening press tends to stick to the enormous amounts of PR created so doesn’t need writers. It’s the one event when you know all the mag staff will turn up at.

8. Did a car boot the other day, selling stuff from under the stairs. Arrived early-6am -24 hour economy etc. No-one was there. Left, and called organisers. They said come back at 7.30am. It was getting busy. First up are African guys looking for old mobiles. One bloke told me he bought new stuff as prizes for the British Legion (who were knocked back for a show garden slot at Chelsea 2012) raffle. Lots of old guys bought gardening stuff from me. They grew there own – not so interested in flowers. Lots of East Europeans bought baby stuff. Lots of old guys bought second hand books, hoping to Ebay them on for a profit. Some used their phones to check prices East European men bought clothes. Mostly poor people, bartering hard. With the odd richer mummy I could hold my price. I wondered where the ‘thrifty’ generation of young skip-divers and grow your owners were. Then I realised. They were at the farmers’ market.
One bloke to me as I packed up. ‘Must have been shit then eh? Me: ‘No I sold out.’ Bloke. ‘Not that shit then, eh?’
One of my last sales was a sack the old toys were in – 50p to a Middle Eastern guy. When I got home my wife asked what had happened to the Mamas and Papas toy bag. Did I know how much it cost? I bought it when William was born. How much did you sell it for? Two hours mourning. The rub: ‘Well I’ll have to get a new one then.’

9. The spring bedding story was a bit of a lesson on how the media works. You remember, the story about mass dumping of spring bedding by Blue Ribbon with the blame going to…Monty Don? This originated in a story I wrote months ago about MD saying on the One Show that you should hold off seed sowing. Then on Gardeners’ World first programme of 2013 no-one planted anything much. GCA criticised him a bit. A month (of cold weather) later NFU/BPOA did a press release on spring bedding growers suffering poor sales and having to chuck plants, in response to lots of stories about farmers losing lambs. BNPS stuck the two together and it ran in a few papers. None of the hacks talked to MD/GCA, but they did get reaction to BNPS story, which said that MD was to blame for spring bedding being thrown away, which no-one had ever said.

10. Soilman’s latest.

11. The Sun on Sunday has had it’s first gardening mention since launch. A voucher for free geranium (worth £3.99) from the Garden Centre Group when another purchase is made. Did very well I hear.

12. Latest gardening pages: Stephen Lacey homage to Arne Maynard. Tom Stuart-Smith lauds Piet Oudolf. Former ‘grow your own’ and now ‘food’ writers on each other.

13. Mail has issued Chelsea Flower Show ’100 years in pictures’. Mail has no involvement in CFS and pulled out of Hampton Court three years ago.

14. Recent Monty tweets.

‘BBC insist on refering to garden centres because that’s where most people shop…’

‘Obviously GW has no responsibility to the trade be they individual nurseries or vast garden centres, save in aiding the gardener’

‘I am personally very keen that we help small, idosyncratic nurseries wherever possible.’

I heard that MD’s garden got a makeover with some new planting prior to his most recent return to Gardeners’ World.

15. For the team at Durstons Garden Products cricket is part of everyday life. It’s officially the company’s favourite sport, so-much-so that Wes Durston (son of Director Steve and brother to Director Dan Durston), plays cricket for Derbyshire’s County Cricket Club, where Durstons is also a regular sponsor.

So its not surprising that the sales team at Durstons was left a little astonished this month when they discovered that Durstons growing media is a firm favourite for the flying variety of crickets too!

Steve Evans, general manager of Sheffield based Livefoods Direct sent through an email to the Durstons team to let them know how much his breeding colony of crickets was enjoying the superior quality of Durstons Seed & Cutting Compost and its Growbags.

“They’re not interested in anything else” said Steve. “Excuse the pun!, but they appear to be ‘bowled over’ by the blend of rich growing media, and I’d be completely ‘stumped’ without it. They really are very particular, and like most of us appreciate a little luxury, and the superior quality of Durstons is exactly what they enjoy.”

16. Spotted: Olly Smith at Chessington World of Adventures.

1. Prince Harry has been baking cakes for Sentabale in Maseru, Lesotho. Will he do the same at Chelsea Flower Show? No, but he will be there on 20 May. Also at the show will be Zara Phillips, cutting a cake for John Deere tractors’ 50th. And the Queen. Hazza effect made tix sell out/touts bump up prices quick.

2. Other Chelsea gossip. Hortus Loci and Crocus are friends again.  Tim Penrose from Bowden Hostas is possibly the biggest character in the marquee if you’re looking for someone who will chat. There aren’t many overseas trees in the show gardens, honest.  Ash are banned. James Wong was doing a show garden but now he isn’t.  Best bank background, East Village garden designer Marie Agius is daughter of Marcus Agius and grand daughter of Edmund de Rothschild. Judging: this year’s gardens will be judged again afterwards using the RHS’s new criteria-based system. Diarmuid won’t be there. He’s at Hampton Court. One Sunday environment hack has an interview lined up with Harry. There can’t be any good evening events on this year. I haven’t been invited to any anyway.

3. Chelsea odds:

Bradley Hole evens

Ulf 2/1

Balston 3/1

Myers 7/2

16/1 the rest

3.  Peter Seabrook’s autograph Ebay £5.99. Titchmarsh £24.99.  Monty Don £5.95. Charlie Dimmock 75p. Diarmuid Gavin £11.99, Joe Swift 99p

4. At Defra’s annual ministerial media reception. Owen Paterson, Richard Benyon, David Heath and Lord de Mauley were there along with a crowd of hacks and Defra PRs, plus some Borough Market-style Brit food purveyors.
After wading through pile of fag ends on Defra doorstep, much talk about a Brian May badger stunt outside Parly. No-one knew which badger was Brian. Radio 4 are no longer covering stunts where people dress as badgers, bees or foxes outside Parly. Doesn’t make good radio anyway.
OP gave a little speech on priorities, growing GB food, improving environment and his admiration for Australian-style stringent customs regimes after getting his boots washed there because they had Grand National mud on them.
He said he’d had to split up Polish and Hungarian enviro ministers who were arguing about bees and that he’d got hundreds of thousands of anti-gvt neonicotinoid emails. Defra is strong sticking to its guns in face of public opinion about bees, badgers, foxes.
How this event works: Low grade hacks try and make friends with higher up ones. Broadcast hacks pal up with PRs and ministers. Defra PRs v smiley -hope this means they will flag up report dates in the future.

5. TV star Michael Barrymore is working up to three days a week at a Tomlins garden centre in Brentwood, Essex. He says: “I don’t get paid for it. I help out because I enjoy gardening.”

6. Scotch osprey has ousted a Lake District one/ cruelty to badgers ‘almost doubles’ ahead of cull

7.  Superb Monty interview as he goes French on us.

8. Unacceptable. 

Plans to drop climate change from curriculum ‘unacceptable’ Guardian.
Sky News Australia Perth pitch invasions ‘unacceptable’ says Sanzar boss
New Zealand Herald-”From our point of view it’s extremely disappointing and unacceptable behaviour from a small group of idiots in what was otherwise a very good …John Kerry: ‘North Korea’s rhetoric is simply unacceptable’
Telegraph.co.uk He reiterated that North Korea “will not be accepted as a nuclear power,” and called the country’s bellicose rhetoric “simply unacceptable”. Five years’ jail for her life is unacceptable, says brother of woman …
Evening Standard

9. Bees by me:

Bill Oddie calls Owen Paterson a c**t

Harry and Chelsea

Monty and snooker

10. A busy Mont Don has also replied to an article I wrote for thinkinggardens

Mont said: “Monty Don:
I hesitate to dip my toe in these waters but for what it is worth, here is my pennyworth.
A number of points: Television, high-paying journalism, big name designers et al are all driven almost entirely by commercial pressures. Numbers rule. So if you earn your living in the gardening media – as I and a number of people posting here do – then you are pretty much forced to go with the numbers to earn your living. He who pays the piper calls the tune.
Matthew and any other horticultural journalist would give their eye-teeth to get a highly paid gardening column – even if it meant simplifying and repeating those simplicities. Most garden readers and viewers are decent people wanting information and entertainment. They are, in some form, paying for that and you, writer or broadcaster, have to respect that.
Having been a horticultural hack for 25 years and written for every newspaper and most gardening mags I know that I would rather be read by three million people every week than speak to 300 like-minded souls. Television is a mass medium. Always has been. The more people you reach, the better. This does not necessarily mean you have to dumb down but certainly means there is always a pressure to. I think there is a compromise which is to try and simplify things and to inspire. Then people can move on and up.
Books are the medium in which one can truly express yourself – as Anne and others here have notably done. But gardening books sell tiny numbers compared to cooking for example. The great danger – as with the entire horticultural world – is that like speaks enthusiastically to like, everyone gets terribly pleased with themselves and their world draws a little tighter around them.
In the end the real pleasure is the doing. Almost everything interesting about technical gardening has already been said. I would much rather just garden at home than write or film about about it but if one has to go to work it is a pretty damn good way of doing it. So the best thing that one can possibly do as a writer or broadcaster is to enthuse and inspire others to actually go out and do it so they too can experience that satisfaction.
Er, that’s it.
Monty Don  writer and broadcaster.
I’d say: “Garden writing is getting a lot better since I started getting published more in the nationals.” That will probably be the last time I am.

11. Spotted: Natalie Cassidy, Warwick Davies at London aquarium.  Gambo at Oxford circus. Warren Gatland in Cardiff.

12. Have you ever watched? anns a gharadh alba-scottish gardening tv gaelic

13. Top selling gardening book: Titch? No Monty? No. Container Gardening by Richard Jackson.4,461. Between Miranda Hart and Jamie Bulger in Nielsen non-fiction charts.  I’ve got a gardening book out in November btw. I’ll be happy with 4k sales.
14. New series of Superscrimpers is now on Channel 4. Martyn Cox is dishing out money saving gardening tips across the ten week show. Brown sauce to clean secateurs is my favourite.

15. 481k people visted RHS shows last year, 70 pc women
87 pc abc1 17hrs tv, 1,350 press cuttings, 5000 tweets, 104 hrs radio
59 pc over 55.

16. Garsons Farm in Esher featured recently with Katie picking a carrot for CBeebies ‘I Can Cook’.

17.  This guy wants waiter service at Dobbies.

18. Butterflies’ actress Wendy Craig opened Trent Valley Garden Centre (Stephen Smith’s), Doncaster Road on the outskirts of Scunthorpe on August 17, 1985. Do you remember her visit? What are your memories of the day? Leave your comments here.

19. The inimitable Soilman.

20. The Sun gardening domain name was recently bought for £30.

21. Nigel Slater now refers to Dan Pearson as his gardener. Since The Sun launched its Sunday edition it has never carried any gardening editorial, offer or advert.

22. Graham Paskett novel: www.findosmousetrap.co.uk

23. Spoke to Hessayon the other day. He’d sent me a letter. He said the sales of 16m refer just to books on houseplants and cut flowers. ‘the total number of Experts out there is over 53 million, ‘kindest regards Dave’.

24. Great and the good were at RHS Lindley Hall for launch AGMs. Roy Lancaster, Seabrook and lots of plantsmen. Twiglets on menu. I heard that T&M had lost the pumpkin seed they paid record sums for. So rang them the next day. They said it was lost. At end of the day they rang back to say they’d found it. Also at the RHS awards recently in London. .

25. Heritage garden and garden show music is getting better, while numbers fell last year. Chelsea has Brian Eno doing the music for Jinny Blom/Prince Harry. British Sea Power played there once. At Cardiff a Steve Miller type band was playing, who might turn up at Hampton Court.

26. Blue Peter gardener Chris Collins is celebrating a decade at the children’s show by launching a children’s range called Seedlets.
The seeds, tools, watering cans, bags and wildlife houses come in beginner, intermediate and expert levels and are being marketed by LiteBulb Group and sold by King’s Seeds representatives into garden centres.
Collins launched the range at the Toy Fair at Olympia in London. He has ideas for more TV series through Alchemy TV such as 20 strangest plants and ‘River Cottage in the City’, saying: “It’s all very well millionaires doing it in country cottages”. He is also working with catering company ISS on School Food Matters, a project about growing your own in small playgrounds.
He has an RHS book, Grow Your Own for Kids out, and says: “I’ve never had a kid wobble on me. Every kid I’ve worked with gets engaged in gardening because it’s in our blood. We’ve been gardeners for thousands of years but it’s only in the last two decades we’ve been relying into supermarkets.”

27. Waitrose and Middle England middle of the road fave Titch collide in a trolley full of pleasant shopping, reliably-sourced food and the friendly face of afternoon light TV chat, Chelsea Flower Show and the occasional obsequious royal documentary. Waitrose is getting round the issue of BBC and commercial clashes (Titch will unveil new gardening ranges for Waitrose this month) through a “black out period” where he will not appear in Waitrose TV ads and promotions immediately before, during and after Chelsea Flower Show. He ran into a bit of flak when he fronted B&Q for three years, because BBC guidelines don’t allow its presenters to commercially promote their field of expertise. Percy Thrower and Diarmuid Gavin fell foul of this and the BBC dropped them but AT has always managed to negotiate contracts to avoid the commercial conflict issue.
Titch is promoting Waitrose’s ‘commitment to British agriculture and horticulture’. He’s about helping British farmers, post-horsemeat crisis: “There is a real need to promote a greater understanding of just what is involved in producing healthy, well-grown produce and transporting it from field to fork so that it arrives with the consumer in the best possible condition.” So while gardening isn’t about gardening, it’s about shopping, supermarkets have gone the other way. They aren’t about groceries. They’re about farming. But most gardeners think they’re urban farmers now.

28. The wonders of twitter:
Defra UK @DefraGovUK
17h

Hi, this is David Heath. Really pleased to be taking part in today’s #loveourforests tweet-a-thon. Send me your questions!
View details •

matthew appleby @mattapple1

@DefraGovUK hi, what’s going to be in chalara action plan? quarantine zones? any hope for uk ash? will defra aim to save heritage ash? how?
No answer. Defra press office: “He got lots of questions.”

1. I wrote this on garden book values in Telegraph. Seems old ones a worth a bit but only if you can’t get the info on the internet. New ones…The next DT gardening section is dedicated to…snowdrops.

2. Went to Turner Prize winner Keith Tyson exhibition at Royal Academy last week. I went to art college with KT, who sported a George Orwell look and was the maddest art student there. V. intense but amusing. Nick Rhodes was at the opening looking older, shortish and over made-up, with Lady Di hair. Spoke to KT, He said he was off to talk to his boys, and mate. Still, I haven’t spoken to him for 22 years.

3. Previously inky newsprint Garden News has gone glossy. Up against Amateur Gardening now. Also trying to do some real news. But no original stuff in the last issue. Harder with short deadlines.

4. Wayne Hemingway’s Water butts in the shape of a butt, sold out of 5,000 from B&Q but because of three complaints B&Q ‘reluctantly delisted’. Was at B&Q spring launch the other day at Centrepoint. Titch was conspicuous by his absence after his 3-year contract ended. The launch didn’t really feature any gardening. But Kirstie Allsopp did turn up.

5. Funny book.

6. British Guild of Agricultural Journalists Awards
Nominations are open for the Regional Newspaper and Journalist Awards, for the best farming and rural affairs coverage in a regional newspaper. The awards celebrate consistently high quality reporting by regional newspapers of the issues that affect agriculture, other rural businesses and the people who work in the countryside. The deadline for nominations is 22 February and entrants do not have to be members of the Guild. More details and an entry form can be found at www.gaj.org.uk or contact awards secretary Louise Impey on +44 (0)1582 872271 and louise.impey@fwi.co.uk

7. Carp otter wars.

8. Recent Garden Centre Association star  Carol Klein reminds me of Cilla Back.

9. Spotted Clint Dempsey (Spurs footballer promoting some football game) and Blue Peter’s Chris Collins promoting Seedlets at Olympia Toy Fair. CC gave me a signed copy of his book for my kids. They now have one from him and a signed pic of mr Bloom, who is back on CBeebies, with a roadshow.

10. On Twitter, Monty Don said Twitter was like Alzheimers, with people always asking the same question. Someone said their parent had Alzheimers and they’d rather they had the illness than be dead. Monty also on about how BBC haven’t promoted his new French gardens series. They have, on One Show and Radio 2, where MD appeared ahead of the series. But not to gardening press. I had to dig a bit to find the external PR company promoting the shows (not the BBC’s 147 press officers).

11. Titch on David Bowie: “Whether you enjoyed Ziggy Stardust more than Scary Monsters is really a matter for you, but whichever you plump for, I sincerely trust you find something to enjoy in both, because there’s certainly plenty to celebrate. David Bowie is a lovely chap who provided us with bags of memorable music, and give us all a great deal of pleasure as well as some great lyrics to keep us guessing! In my view, he’s well up there with some of the true legends of popular music: Cliff Richard, the Swingle Sisters and the evergreen Chris de Burgh. I hear that his new album has got a bit of everything, with many things in between (!), so plump up the cushions, get the kettle on, pin back the old lug-holes and …enjoy!” (as told to Craig Brown in Private Eye).

12. On getting into journalism by Andrew Marr: ‘People will sit for years in local newspaper offices cold-calling the police and hospitals, trying desperately to stay awake in local council meetings, write about garden ornament design, accountancy vacancies for trade journals and sit being bellowed at by drunken old news editor tyrants.’

13. The Times keeps insisting it ‘broke the story’ of the ash outbreak last October (repeated again in January 22 edition. The story was in the Daily Mail (which is read by far more people than The Times) almost five months earlier. The Times was offered the story then, but did not want it, because the people there did not understand the significance of it. Only when the government press released more details, did the Times run its ‘scoop’.

14. You and Yours Winifred Robinson was in touch the other day about an indoor gardening craze. She wanted some stats to back it up. I said indoor plant sales were going down but gave some areas where they were stronger. And suggested Dr Hessayon as an interviewee.

15. Dobbies video

16. Camilla is at Garden Museum this week doing the Floriculture opening.

17. Garden Press Event on Thurs at Barbican.

18. Was at Wisley the other day with kids. The mother I was with wasn’t allowed in because she had her husband’s card. They confiscated the card. I suggested this might be a crackdown. She was the seventh in the 20mins after opening this had happened to. We got in eventually. Later that week, a mother with her child at Wisley was PR’d as RHS’s 400,000th member.

Also went to the London Eye.

19. Went to fruit fly event in Soho last week.
20. went to Mr Fothergill’s the other day but had to turn round because of a fire.

21. Peter Blake will attend the launch of the third annual Chiswick House Camellia Festival, on Thursday 14 February, The launch will be marked by the publication of a new limited edition print by Peter Blake: Camellia Japonica Incarnata based on his original watercolour painting made especially for Chiswick House Trust. The limited edition of 250 prints signed by the artist will be sold to raise funds for the Trust at £100 each.

Christine Walkden and Christopher Walkden –separated at birth?

2. Allotment Wars is on BBC 1 10.35 21 January. Kevin Hull was in touch a year ago about it and for a few months afterwards having “enjoyed reading some of your articles and blog”. He was going to come down but couldn’t show because of family illness. I wonder if the programme will tackle allotment ‘dirty plot’ notices, which is the serious issue aside from the petty neighbour squabbles.
3. Talking of BBC, they did not tell many gardening mags about Allotment Wars, Monty Don’s French Gardens. A-Z of gardening TV or indeed any other garden shows they have on in 2013, apart from the ones you suggest to them that might be on. Why can’t they promote their own shows? They have  147 press officers who never tell you what is going to be on because they say they don’t know. They used an outside press agency to promote Don’s new show, which starts on 1 Feb. Some garden editors are getting frustrated I hear. Maybe they save it all for BBC Gardeners’ World mag. Or maybe they’re all doing Jimmy Savile defensive PR. I asked them about dropping 3 Counties Radio gardening show. They didn’t know pretty much anything about it.

4. Visited Olympics the other day. Last I went almost a year ago was to look round the gardens for a Guardian piece. I was the only hack there. Not that it stopped several gardening hacks writing pieces off the website. This time, Telegraph, Times, Standard (not the garden hack), a news agency and Joe Swift were there.

5. Guild Agricultural Journalists is trying to restart its NFU hort hack of the year award after six years off. “We’re in the process of trying to get it going again. One of my Guild colleagues has started the conversation with the NFU, but I’m not sure where they’ve got to. I’ll try and find out for you. Our original aim was to relaunch it this year,” they tell me.

6.I see the papers have decided to run the Prince Harry/ Chelsea Flower Show story I broke in November. Articles in the Mail and Sunday Times even use the same quotes and pics as the story from almost two months ago.

7. RHS The Garden magazine January:
Mail garden hack Nigel Colborn column on ash dieback: “Last October when the disease hit the headlines…blah blah blah” Ash dieback was a headline in his own paper in June, six months before ‘plantmadnige’s’ why oh why piece.  He goes on about ash dieback and the Government not warning anyone.  Did he warn us about ash dieback in June, or October? No. Makes the whole The Garden column redundant.  Ditto Titchmarsh in latest Gardeners World-similar piece.
Then again, a letter in the times from BCGI lauded the times for breaking the dieback news (five months after the Mail).

8. The All-Ireland Tree Felling Contest has been won by tree fellers from Limerick
© 1976 The Two Ronnies

10. Diarmuid Gavin was in ITV’s Splash celeb diving programme, not qualifying with 16.5 points. He wore an Ireland shirt and yellow trunks. Here’s why he did it.

11. Davina McCall has a greenhouse.

12. A few blogs ago I asked who a Kew graduate from the 1980s was. This is her. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helge_Breloer

13. Where Chefs Eat (author: Joe Warwick) Amsterdam De Kas restored 1926 nursery.

14. Downing St cat.

Q to St James’ Park manager Mark Wasilewski: What makes a successful park manager?
A In this job – being bordered by Buckingham Palace, Downing Street and Parliament Square – it is sensitivity and diplomacy. You never know who’s asking you about a flower or tree. My staff of five people deal with the palace, Number 10 and Scotland Yard and this can throw up unusual situations. Larry, the Downing Street cat, recently found its way through my pet Maisie’s magnetic catflap: I had to carry him back and ease him through the Downing Street railings. Management involves planning hospitality, security, media and medical positions and crowd movements on top of horticulture and maintenance. People see us as civil servants, but I’m a gardener.
15. Tweets: Is Minty Don the new Richard Madeley? – handsome, charming, puts foot in it.

1. Chris Young ?@SeeWhyGardens
@TheMontyDon you could always spend a cosy few hours indoors reading #thegarden magazine (I know, I know, that’s a cheap plug, but….!)
@TheMontyDon
@SeeWhyGardens I would absolutely love to but have not even seen a copy for years, let alone read it. My loss.
Sharon Moncur ?@SharonMoncur
@TheMontyDon @seewhygardens Someone buy that man an RHS membership!
MontyDon ?@TheMontyDon
@SharonMoncur @SeeWhyGardens Cannot do that as long as I write or broadcast about the RHS and retain impartiality.
Chris Young ?@SeeWhyGardens
@TheMontyDon @sharonmoncur I can see that about membership but sad about not coming across it. Will need to rectify..!
Chris Young ?@SeeWhyGardens
@SharonMoncur @themontydon DM me an address to send some to! I would have thought/hoped it would have been part of your reading…?
MontyDon?@TheMontyDon
@SeeWhyGardens I literally never come across it and am not on a press mailing list. As a result I never see it.
16. Fire devastates Sheerness produce warehouse
Freshinfo-1 hour ago
Five people have been injured in what firefighters have described as a “massive blaze” at a reefer warehouse at the Port of Sheerness.

17. Poetry corner

D T. Brown’s customer service supervisor Deb Nicholls is used to dealing with queries and occasional problems presented to her by the company’s customers, but a poetic lament received recently brought a smile to her face and prompted her to deal with the matter in a like manner. David Simpson of Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, sent her the following plea:

I bought some ‘Toscana’ strawberry seeds, I thought I would try something quirky,
I looked forward to a summer of delicious soft fruit, and went to the greenhouse quite perky.
But when I read the sowing instructions, in despair I sank to my knees,
It said that in order to germinate, they need a temperature of 200 degrees!
Oh Mr Brown, I am now in a pickle, I don’t know what I should try,
I’ve turned the knob as far as I can, but my propagator won’t go up that high!
Perhaps it’s a typo that nobody spotted, it can sometimes happen you know,
Or maybe it’s true and these special seed need roasting to get them to grow!
So please Mr Brown let me know what to do, I’ve tried but I can’t raise that heat,
If there’s something to try, apart from the oven, our wisdom would go down a treat!
The problem was indeed a ‘typo’ and Deb realised ‘200’ should have read ‘20°’. Her response was swift, apologetic – and in verse:

Dear Mr Simpson I’m down on my knees,
How silly of us, 200 degrees!
Was it the printer or was it just missed
It could be the designer who had a slight lisp.
Your email has given us all a big laugh and therefore I say on all our behalf
However it happened we really are sorry
and am sending a packet that will cost you no lolly
“I appreciated Mr Simpson’s tongue-in-cheek complaint and thought he deserved a reply in verse”, said Deb. “We like to react promptly, but promptly and in verse is more of a challenge! We are always grateful if someone point out an error and we take all our customers’ comments seriously.”
Defra issued peat task force response. But didnl;t tell anyone.
18. Metro – vegivores article. Not before time.
Simon Hopkinson’s the vegetarian option quadrille. Wonder when there will be a vegetarian TV programme.

19. MHP 30 to Watch 2013
The winners of the MHP 30 to Watch 2013 are as follows:

Emily Ashton, The Sun
James Ball, the guardian
Sophie Borland, Daily Mail
Michael Bow, City A.M.
Kaya Burgess, The Times
Susannah Butter, London Evening Standard
Tina Campanella, Freelance
Peter Campbell, Daily Mail
Robert Cookson, Financial Times
Andrew Dagnell, ITV
Rachel Dalton, Professional Pensions
Anjuli Davies, Reuters
Dan Dunkley, Private Equity News
Adam Gabbatt, the guardian
Emily Gosden, The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph
Ben Griffiths, The Sunday People
Josh Halliday, the guardian
Isabel Hardman, The Spectator
Kathryn Hopkins, The Times
Dan Hyde, Daily Mail
John Kenchington, Investment Adviser
David Keohane, FT Alphaville
Hannah Kuchler, Financial Times
Ben Martin, The Daily Telegraph
Simon Murphy, Daily Mail
Tom Rayner, Sky News
Juliet Samuel, The Times
Chris Spillane, Bloomberg News
Michael Stothard, Financial Times
Jon Swaine, The Daily Telegraph

Special Gold Awards
Emily Ashton, The Sun
Peter Campbell, Daily Mail
Isabel Hardman, The Spectator
Tom Rayner, Sky News
Jon Swaine, The Daily Telegraph

Young Campaigning Journalist of the Year
Kaya Burgess, The Times

20. Otter fish tarka way. Will otter hounds make a comeback?

Diamuid Gavin. ****s in trunks. Splash ITV1. Celebrity gardener Diarmuid Gavin will be mentored by Olympics hero Tom Daley alongside a host of stars eager to perfect their diving skills in ITV1′s new show Splash! on 12 January.

1. Wrote some of this on gardening trends in the Telegraph. Nice mix of what I thought trends might be and what more celebrity writers hoped trends might be. There are 15 here in the original.

2. One trend was Scotts Flower Magic seed shaker. Mail ran it months ago (obviously after trade media had)  Independent ran on 7 Jan, from news agency Solent News, picked up from Amateur Gardening/trends piece.

3. Also wrote this for thinkinggardens on garden columnists.

4. This about 70,000 ash imports was in a paper or two over Xmas from HW.

4. Daily Mash garden centre humour.

5. How was Xmas etc? One person I asked said not good. An elderly relative fell ill. I said I hope he got better. They said he died four days later and they had to visit hospital every day.

6. Sandringham was in news over Xmas.

7. Secrets of a Good Marriage ran on c4 in early Jan.. A guy I know was on it, talking about how he was a stay at home dad (showing him going cycling daily while his kids went to school) while his wife worked. On the night the programme went out, his £1,000 bike got nicked from his shed.

8. Good story in Telegraph on new slug  (picked up from BBRSC) and in Garden News on snowdrop ailments. Though narcissus leaf scorch does not really affect amateur gardeners, it was still an original piece. What’s going on?

9. A tweet sent by Produce World’s Farming Director Jason Burgess has been listed as one of Sainsbury’s top tweets from December 2012. Produce World, the UK’s leading grower and supplier of fresh produce, featured in Jason Burgess’ tweet after he visited a Sainsbury’s store in King’s Lynn and noticed its impressive onion display. The tweet read:

@ProduceWorld @SainsburysPR Great display of our British onions at New King’s Lynn. http://pic.twitter.com/7nWvI7bR

10. Quite liked this from Anne Wareham on Garden Media Guild awards.

11. uk wine POWER LIST 2013
• 1 Julia Stafford, The Wine Pantry, London
• 2 The Red Lion Hotel in Clovelly
• 3 John Worontschak
• 4 Mike Paul
• 5 Dr Stephen Skelton, consultant
• 6 Olly Smith
• 7 Plumpton College
• 8 Camel Valley
• 9 Ian Edwards, Furleigh Estate
• 10 Frazer Thompson, Chapel Down
• 11 Christian Holthausen, Nyetimber
• 12 Cherie Spriggs, Nyetimber
• 13 Art Tukker, winemaker and owner of Tinwood Estate in West Sussex
• 14 Nick Hall, Herbert Hall Wines
• 15 Bolney Wine Estate
• 16 Mark Driver, Rathfinny Estate
• 17 Chris Scott, ThirtyFifty
• 18 Julia Trustram Eve, English Wine Producers
• 19 Susanna Forbes, DrinkBritain.com
• 20 James Graham, ukvine.com

12. Off to sister resto of Cumbria’s best resto L’Enclume. Roganic.
6 Course Vegetarian Menu

Leek custard with dill broth,
salsify and mustard

Artichoke dumplings,
with truffle, Ragstone and perilla

Beets and butternut,
parsley and hazelnuts

Cauliflower in juniper whey,
velvet caps and scurvy grass

Hay-baked celeriac, broccoli stem,
sage and bittercress

Pears, chestnuts
and crispy cake

£55
13. Snotty hacks berate PRs for doing PR work. Who do they think they are?

14. A little boy asked his mother, “Why are you crying?” “Because I’m a woman,” she told him. “I don’t understand,” he said. His Mom just hugged him and said, “And you never will.” Later the little boy asked his father, “Why does mother seem to cry for no reason?” “All women cry for no reason,” was all his dad could say. The little boy grew up and became a man, still wondering why women cry. Finally he put in a call to God. When God got on the phone, he asked, “God, why do women cry so easily?” God said, “When I made the woman she had to be special. I made her shoulders strong enough to carry the weight of the world, yet gentle enough to give comfort. I gave her an inner strength to endure childbirth and the rejection that many times comes from her children. I gave her a hardness that allows her to keep going when everyone else gives up, and take care of her family through sickness and fatigue without complaining. I gave her the sensitivity to love her children under any and all circumstances, even when her child has hurt her very badly. I gave her strength to carry her husband through his faults and fashioned her from his rib to protect his heart. I gave her wisdom to know that a good husband never hurts his wife, but sometimes tests her strengths and her resolve to stand beside him unfalteringly. And finally, I gave her a tear to shed. This is hers exclusively to use whenever it is needed.” “You see my son,” said God, “the beauty of a woman is not in the clothes she wears, the figure that she carries, or the way she combs her hair. The beauty of a woman must be seen in her eyes, because that is the doorway to her heart – the place where love resides.” Author: Unknown

15. George Best alive and well on Keswick market.

16. National Trust Morden Hall play area opendd last year hit by rain. The flying fox/deathslide is closed because of subsidence.

17. Wimbledon art college garden

What are the trends for 2013? Telegraph kindly used a potted version of this on 5 January. Amateur Gardening used one late last year. There’s 15 here…

Outdoor lighting
Outdoor lighting as an antidote to 2012’s sodden BBQ-free year. LED lighting for urban food production. From the cheerful bestseller Bright Eye Happy Hens which light up your garden to extend garden use when it’s dark but not raining, to serious moves towards the brilliantly Tomorrow’s World-style mobile racks for multi-tiered crop production, LED’s are transforming gardening into a 24-hour activity, be it for leisure or serious growing. Coming your way soon (as TW would say) Philips Lighting LED lights at Stockbridge Technology Centre for horticultural research in North Yorkshire enable light spectrum adjustment and flexibility, for growing a range of low level crops such as herbs, leafy salads, flowers, strawberries and plants in propagation. Alnwick Garden has also installed ‘Sparkle’, a permanent lighting installation designed to attract visitors during ‘shoulder months’ in spring and autumn.

Garden centre cafes
Garden centre catering – people will notice that almost everyone eats at garden retailers. There were 55m visits to garden centre cafes in 2011 according to Ipsos Mori surveys, up from 36m in 2008. Going to a garden centre café may be deeply unfashionable, but if you see the rustic charm of Michelin-starred Petersham Nurseries, you witness another story.

Secondary school gardening
Secondary school gardening – now most primary schools are covered by the RHS Campaign for Schools Gardening scheme launched in 2007 and with more than 10,000 schools involved within three years. Few secondaries do horticulture but breaking the trail are schools such as Wilmington Academy in Kent, Alan Titchmarsh’s favourite, the Oathall community college in Hayward’s Heath and Carshalton Boys Sports College, a school Jamie Oliver and Prince Charles visited recently to see how they get students to eat better through learning how to grow. With increased tuition fees putting people off going to university, horticulture may be one of the things that can benefit.

Visiting gardens with a serious eye
Rory Stuart’s new book What Are Gardens For (Frances Lincoln), and Anne Wareham’s thinkingardens.com website are getting garden visitors to look more seriously and critically and what they see. Stuart asks: “What do we expect of gardens – when we make them and when we visit them? Could we get more from them, if we thought harder about what it is we want and why we make gardens? This book approaches the experience of being in a garden from many different angles, questioning many of our easily-adopted assumptions and suggesting ways of getting more from any garden, whether it is our own or one we are visiting.”

Post-allotment growing
After a poor season caused by endless rain, and with the grow your own boom dying out, gardeners who got into GYO in the last few years may be running out of inspiration. Time to look outside the box. Camping, socialising, competition veg growing, even joining the dreaded committee could re-invigorate your love of allotmenteering.

Garden history
Ahead of nationwide celebrations of the tercentenary of Capability Brown’s birth in 2016, garden history is beginning to take a more prominent role.
There’s the Garden Museum with its Floriculture Flowers, Love, and Money from14th February to 28th April 2013, an exhibition telling the story of the cut flower trade from the 17th century until today. And there’s the British Museum’s blockbuster exhibition Life and death in Pompeii and Herculaneum (28 March – 29 September 2013), which has a strong emphasis on domestic life in AD 79. Everyone will want their own hortus (garden) after seeing this show. The hortus was a place for rest and relaxation for Romans. Objects on display include frescoes decorating a garden room, marble and bronze statues of people, gods and animals and fountain spouts.

Women in gardening
Women now run the RHS, Horticultural Trades Association, and the National Trust, chair the Society of Garden Designers and edit more gardening publications than before. This may lead to changes in how garden attractions, gardening media and garden bodies work. On the other hand, it might not.

Children’s attractions and gardening
Britain’s biggest garden centre chain The Garden Centre Group now has more than 40 soft play areas in its outlets. Tamworth garden centre Planters has a new Sky Trail adventure course in its plant area. While retailers are installing shamelessly colourful attractions that have no link to gardens, bodies such as the National Trust and RHS prefer ‘natural’ play areas, such as those recently built at Morden Hall, Box Hill and Gibside and Wisley. More controversially, the Trust also wants a privately-run BeWILDerwood ‘imaginative adventure park’ to cover 125 acres of Tatton Park.

French gardening
A jardinière boom could be prompted by Monty Don’s new series on French gardens, due on the BBC in March. Think parterre, broderie, allee, Patte d’Oie. The series follows Don’s Italian Gardens shows of 2011 and his Around the World in 80 gardens (2008).

New plants
Peruvian Tree Lilies (Alstroemeria), reaching 6ft plus by the end of summer and great for cutting. Also for patios, Crazytunia Mandevilla, which are mounded and weather-proof petunias in new colours and patterns. Both from Thompson & Morgan.

Wildflower meadows
Meadow, meadows and more meadows and the rather wild and weedy look of Olympic designer Sarah Price. Everyone will want a wildflower meadow post-Olympics when Nigel Dunnett (also back at Chelsea’s) beautiful planting stunned millions. A plethora of products and seeds are on the market. Replace your lawn (or a bit of it) to get the Olympic golden (or multicoloured) look with an April sowing. Properly prepare the ground first of course.

Sweetpeas
Next year is year of the sweetpea, says just about everyone else who has ever sold or bred Britain’s most popular annual. New breeding has reinvigorated the cottage garden favourite. Pale lavender multiflora Lathyrus ‘Chelsea Centenary’ could be big during the RHS show –it’s one of 25 new varieties from Mr Fothergill’s. Suttons, Unwins and Kings have followed suit with revamped ranges for 2013. Thompson & Morgan’s new two-tone purple bloom ‘Erewhon’ is unusual because it inverts the usual colour pattern for sweet peas, with its lower petals darker than the ones above.

Instant flowers
Are you a lazy gardener who wants to grow flowers from a bottle at the shake of a wrist? Flower Magic shaker from Scotts Miracle-Gro(£12.99) is a colourful follow up to the company’s Patch Magic lawn seed shaker. The product includes flower seed and fertiliser in coir. Westland has launched a similar product in a pouch or clip strip – GroSure Easy Flowers (from £2.99).

Vintage
The poor economy and the RHS Chelsea Flower Show centenary will trigger vintage plant and equipment sales. In tough times people try to hold on to what they feel is safe and comforting. Things from the past or from your childhood generally give you a reminder of good times, a time when you don’t have the stresses of adult life. Replica items include Victorian terracotta pots, fruit crates, sieves, string and line, buckets, glass cloches and seed boxes. There is also an edge towards old logos – tea-light holders that have a vintage seed packet design on them. Also bottle gardens and terrariums. And watch out for 100-year-old trees at Chelsea.

Young royals at Chelsea

At Chelsea Flower Show, the big news is that Prince Harry is set to attend on behalf of his Sentebale charity, which helps the deprived of Lesotho. Prince Charles’ favourite designer Jinny Blom has designed the Sentebale show garden. At Chelsea, also look out for heavyweight designer names Christopher Bradley-Hole, Ulf Nordjfell, Michael Balston, and, inevitably, Diarmuid Gavin. And of course, the ultimate ‘name’ at the show, The Queen, who will visit for a 49th time.

1. Guerrilla garlanding is back. I invented the term in 2009 to describe festive revellers putting Christmas decorations on trees in parks and gardens after I saw this tree on Wimbledon Common. This year, the decorated fir, which annoyed Common Conservators in 2009, is back. Will this take off for 2012?
##Recession-busting guerrilla grotto-ers are brightening up Britain’s parks, gardens and open spaces by decorating outdoor conifers with tinsel, baubles and fairies. This decorated tree on Wimbledon Common has been a fixture for years, say the common’s conservators. But several other decorated trees appeared overnight this year on the common. Anarchic guerrilla garlanders are competing against each other on Flickr, Facebook and Twitter to show their best. A mole tells me: “No-one knows who does it. But it brightens the place up in winter and the recession. We think it is local people – but it could be the Wombles. Who knows? The best thing is that no-one has vandalised the trees.” Have you noticed festive guerrilla grottos appearing near you?

2. Looking up gardlanding brought back the memories of writing Telegraph gardening. The Titchmarsh allotment TV story this week put my stuff back top of the most read stuff in that section.

3. Adam Pasco’s leaving do at BBC in Hammersmith. Someone asked if I was going. I emailed AP to blag an invite. He said it was a surprise party for him and to email to organisers. Oops. James Alexander Sinclair tweeted a pic during the event so I nipped round from work to wave at Matthew Wilson and drink a glass of fizz and chat to Helen Griffin from Frances Lincoln and Graham Rice, mainly about John Terry’s Cobham garden building. AP gave a nice speech mentioning Hort Week and how Haymarket paid him £6k a year for his first mag job.

4. Spotted: Gail Porter and Nina Conti in Coach and Horses.

5. A pony perplexing German commuters on the subway has become the latest internet sensation.

6. Yellow(ish) Xmas trees:

Expecting a golden Christmas present? This year’s Christmas trees are set to be yellower than in previous years.
This year’s record rainfall washed away nitrogen fertiliser granules applied to feed trees and make them green, or
pushed liquid nitrogen farther into the ground than roots can reach.
Champion grower Geoff Gilbert, said this year’s record rainfall had led to trees being more yellow than usual: “If it gets too wet they can’t take up the nitrogen and some get a bit yellow. People put nitrogen on them in September to green them up because it’s been that wet and the nitrogen hasn’t greened them. But there’s nothing wrong with a bit of yellow. A good tree’s colour and shape is in the eye of the beholder. It’s the freshness that counts. The yellow doesn’t mean it’s a bad tree, it’s the heaviness you should test. If it’s heavy it means it’s good and full of sap.”
The winners of the Champion Wreath accolade from Woods Farm, Solihull, had their decorated wreath placed on number 10′ Downing Street’s door this month.
Woods Farm owner Gilbert said he was retailing trees direct to the public for £40 for a six foot Nordman from his Birmingham outlet. He claims to supply “half” of all Birmingham’s trees.

This year’s winner, Mike Craig of Garrocher Tree Farm in Newton Stewart, Dumfries and Galloway, delivered the tree to stand outside 10 Downing Street. Craig said yellowing of trees has been an issue in recent wet years: “It is quite a problem because we are on the west coast of Scotland and we get more wet than anywhere. We did struggle with that. We ended up fertilising three times and they were still deficient. And if you overdo the fertiliser it weakens the leader at the top of the tree and that can lead to your fairy or star flopping. It’s too much rain and lack of sunlight that does it.”
Runners up Richard and Gail Underwood of Oakberry Trees, Lutterworth, provided the centrepiece for the Pillared Room inside the Prime Minister’s home.
Richard Underwood said: “The trees are probably a little lighter in shade than normal but I wouldn’t say there’s a problem with that. If you were being particularly observant you would notice it. Some people rather like the lighter colour of needle.”
Each year, the BCTGA hosts the Christmas Tree Competition to find the country’s Champion Christmas Tree Grower. The 14th annual competition was held at Berkshire College of Agriculture in October.

Meanwhile, Christmas trees prices can vary by up to £25 for the same sized Nordman fir, Britain’s most popular tree, surveys have found.
Garden centres are varying how they size trees but prices for six foot Nordmans vary from £29.98 to £54.99 in a survey. Ikea’s a £1 now.

7. Steve Ween pothole gardener Merry Xmas vid.

8. Spotted: Sinclair’s Tara ‘cartwheeling’ Truman on Total Wipeout. Her time was 2.23.

9. Fera xmas card

Scientists were working, to put the world right
Our food and environment needed some care
To be rid of diseases, both common and rare
First thoughts went to farmers to help with their yield
They looked at the way our veg grows in the field
They helped stop disease through their science and their knowledge
They looked at the bugs that on crops like to forage
They checked all the food that’s shipped in from abroad
And advised on its packaging and the way that it’s stored
Then looked at the wildlife from bug, bird and bee
From behaviour and habitat to see what they’d see
They ran tests on vet meds and advised what to do
To ensure that the food chain’s protected for you
From pigs through to cattle and turkeys as well
Ensuring their produce was all safe to sell
Widening the focus, plant health was then checked
Finding disease on the trees that it’s wrecked
Advising and nurturing, from leaf, root through stem
They went out to our nurseries, liaising with them
Policies created, protected by science
Customer base, all in full compliance
The science progresses, the work more intense
Protecting our world, you know it makes sense!
The examples fore-mentioned, are but a few
To depict but a sample of work that we do
And as Christmas draws nearer , with full festive cheer
Fera says
Seasons Greetings

10. Elf

11. mullet

12. poo owl

Went to Mount Stewart Primary School in Harrow the other day to see forestry minister David Heath plant a tree. He told me about EU rules stopping bans of diseased plant imports. In HW next issue. My nephew Sam Webb used to be a pupil.

1. Who is this?

The question came originally from Peter Thurman (design and tree man) who was at Kew in 1980s. I think it must be part of a quiz he is doing. Everyone is stumped on this one. I thought it was Joan Webber or Valerie McBride Munro. Apparently not. Prize: Official London 2012 Olympic programme.

2. Spotted: Roger McGough at Hammersmith tube. Red glasses.
Simon Calder at Borough market. Walks geekily.
Lesley Garrett, Billy and Kat Moon, Downtown Abbey’s Jim Carter and Imelda Staunton are top celeb shoppers at Sunshine Garden Centre in N London.

3. Lookalikes Anisa Gress and Maria Miller.

4.Watch BBC garden centre comedy. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wL9lkHXB9oc
More about this programme: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01p66hd. Roisin offers the customers some help at the garden centre.

5. Mr Hackit is the gardener in Grandpa in My Pocket. James Bolam is grandpa. Doesn’t like it if you remind him about Likely Lads. There’s a theme on kids telly that gardeners look like hayseeds. Mr Bloom is similar.http://www.radiotimes.com/episode/zgrx/grandpa-in-my-pocket–series-1—13-a-garden-full-of-beasts

6. Prime Minister David Cameron has made no secret he’s a fan of The X Factor.
So when it came to providing some music at the annual Downing Street tree-lighting ceremony, he looked to the ITV talent show to provide the entertainment.
After learning they were in the final on Sunday night, Christopher Maloney, James Arthur and Jahmene Douglas continued their exciting week by performing for the PM. I was there the day before. They couldn’t get the wrapping off the tree.

7. T&M did apply for space at Chelsea 2013, but we were not successful, even though they won Chelsea plant of the year in 2012.

8. View from Poland:
“Consumers in our part of Europe are becoming frugal as well, paying down debt, and not taking on new loans, according to our recent researches. I think it’s the main reason, why polish boom in single-family housing has ended so suddenly. Customers want save their money, because wages don’t seem to be rising fast… But from the other hand, they need to furnish their apartments and care for their gardens. Generally gardens in Poland are becoming a substitute of foreign beaches. Stay-cation in Poland is extremely popular. There is also new trend of consumers wanting to have neater garden than their neighbours. This attitude explains their wish to invest more money in their gardens. In my opinion the impact on sales in Poland or in Germany will be not so powerful because people are more willing to invest their money in durable goods. The main driver of garden retail in our part of Europe is also increasing popularity of barbecuing, especially of its’ more sophisticated form – gourmet. Barbecues had the fastest growth in that year because spending evenings with close friends and family was the most popular form of recreation at the weekend. However, during the barbecuing season this type of entertainment wasn’t restricted to weekends only. In case of any further questions, feel free to ask ”

9. Jimmy May, son of Brian, is a physiotherapist in Hammersmith.
10. George Melly used to masturbate on fish he caught.

11. At the recent BALI awards at Grosvenor House presenter the BBC newsreader Huw Edwards has a go at Starbucks, who have agreed to pay two years tax after being accused of not paying much. ‘There are no guarantees for the years after that’, said Edwards. ‘We should all have a triple moccachino and die promptly from a heart attack afterwards to celebrate.’ He also had a running gag about gabions.

12. At Haymarket’s recent awards, best ‘scoop’* went to a piece by Maisie McCabe in Media Week for a piece about an internal promotion at The Guardian, that ‘beat the nationals’. Good story for Media Week’s ‘movers’ page I’d have thought. But there are loads of examples in the mainstream press of how the media is not much interested in talking about anything other than itself. The Times ran ash dieback on p1 five months after I broke the story. It’s ex environment hack Ben Webster is now a media correspondent. It now has no enviro hack. (*My ash story on dieback hitting GB from June was ‘runner up’ in Haymarket’s best scoop awards.)

13. Ones that got away. Yellow Xmas trees- lack of nitrogen. Guerrilla garlanders. BNPS (Bournemouth News and Pic Service) got in touch about a piece on allotments I wrote for Amateur Gardening on allotment police and increase in dirty plot notices. They wanted to sell the piece with a quote from me on the bottom. My cut: “We’ll include your name.”

14. Writing a piece on GM. Could be in plants you can grow soon. Green groups have no policy on this. Good sales opportunity I reckon.

15. 52 chapters. 200 ideas. 88 pix. Watch this space.

16. Merry Xmas and HNY.

IMG_0382

1. Chelsea Flower Show launch at the Connaught
The stories were Prince Harry (I had in Mail) and Titch sounding off. Telegraph followed up their rip-off of Mail story with the same story three weeks later.

2. There’s 15 show gardens. Was 16 last year. Diarmuid not in yet. James Wong said he had no sponsor. Jo Thompson is showing dead trees for FERA garden. JT and Andrew Wilson were among designers not there and when I asked why they said they weren’t invited. Maybe get a bigger room so all the hacks and designers can fit in and then the hacks can talk to the designers. Alex Denman was pregnant. Sue Biggs announced a gnome painting competition. One designer said to me: “His design looks like mine with blobs on.”

3. Straight on to Garden Media Guild awards at Marriott across Grosvenor Sq. Wrote up Harry and Titch in Gordon Ramsay’s Maze with Caroline Owen and John Ashley. Coke is £4.50. Not really enough time to report on RHS then go to GMG.
4. On Westland table – thanks to Westland. Next to Stephen Anderton and Keith Nicholson. I was so full of caffeine I got SA and Stephen Lacey muddled. Later SA moved seats to sit next to Andrew Wilson to where the Daily Express woman had not turned up. So was next to Dennis Espley, who was answering customer queries on his iphone. That night at Arsenal there was a GCA leaving event for Gillie Westwood I heard.
5. The awards: All my predictions were wrong. Ken Cox won his category for Fruit and Veg from Scotland, which was good. Conifers did not win. Top selling books.
6. The Garden won mag of the year. Later discussed with  Chris Young digest nature of The Garden’s news. He agreed and said it was difficult to do monthly news. But he said everything was improved. I agreed that the ads had moved and Ursula Buchan was no longer involved.
7. Best news story was judged by someone from Indie and PR Liz Anderson. Saw her in pub after. Good story by Marc Rosenberg won.  Presenter Chris Packham, who made a joke about lawns having sex and about his  Stihl chainsaw, was surprised that (my story on) B&Q had put peat in their topsoil. That’s the point. The story is surprising. No one’s surprised Monty won’t list products in Gardener’s World.
8. MR and The Garden news hack Anisa Gress (both ex HW so I thought I’d be in here) judged trade hack of the year won by James Armitage in Garden Design Journal for
Land of the giants
Return of the natives
Get to grips with grasses
Even other GDJ writers had not read these pieces.
a. I entered No Joe Swift for BBC coverage (biggest CFS story, BBC changed policy etc)
b. Ash disease hits Britain (There have been 13,675 ash dieback stories – counted them- published in world media since then, And none before).
c. Beekeepers stung! EU orders a pollen warning on honey jars
But the judges must have thought they were not much cop. I can understand the bee one – Gavin McEwan actually wrote it – not that the judges knew that).
9. Many of the usual suspects won, for typing many of the usual things.
10. Jekka McVicar appeared by Super 8 video link to accept lifetime achievement. She was doing a talk that evening so couldn’t attend.
11. Wrote some more in ‘Maze’ and then went to the Audley or Alderley pub or something and had a few beers with Kris Collins and other hacks. KC was in wedding attire. Martyn Cox, who usually gets hog-whimperingly drunk at these events, and once arm wrestled Carol Klein, left at 6 because he needed to go shopping because retail in his new Southsea home is just Aldi and that.
12. Most drunk were CY and Christopher Woodward. And by the end, me. I walked home via Winter Wonderland feeling like George Bone from Hangover Square by Patrick Hamilton.

Today went to 10 Downing St to see xmas tree erected. They couldn’t get the wrapper off.

1. 29 November. RHS announces who is doing Chelsea in 2013 at The Connaught. In the afternoon, Garden Media Guild announces ‘Oscars’ of garden media in the pm.
I’m having a guess at what will be announced.

2. RHS Chelsea Flower Show: Robert Myers’ Brewin Dolphin garden. Other gardens include Jinny Blom/Sentebale/B&Q, Landform building for Adam Frost/Homebase and Nigel Dunnett/RBC, Roger Platts/M&G, Christopher Bradley-Hole/Telegraph, Ulf Nordjfell/Laurent Perrier, Chris Beardshaw, James Wong, Michael Balston, Diarmuid Gavin and Jo Thompson. Also China and Japan entries.

3. GMG winners
Practical book-James Wong Homegrown Revolution
Reference book –Encyclopedia of Conifers by Derek Spicer
Inspirational book-Anne Wareham-was that this year?
Publication- Gardens Illustrated
News story- B&Q topsoil
Journalist of the year-Monty Don
Columnist- Tim Richardson doesn’t enter. Martyn Cox
Practical journalist of the year-Val Bourne
TV programme-Love Your Garden
Lifetime achievement-Carol Klein

4. At Garden Organic food growing in schools event the other day at Carshalton Boys School, which featured Jamie Oliver/Prince Charles/Matt Baker/Raymond Blanc. Jamie called Charles a hippie. Charles said everyone should keep a pig. Mail headline: “I-told-Prince-Charles-bit-hippy-keeping-pet-pig-Celebrity-chef-Jamie-Oliver-gets-royal-seal-approval-school-dinners-campaign.”

5. Mr Fothergill’s has declared 2013 ‘Year of the Sweet Pea’ and is celebrating by announcing a competition with £500 prizes on offer. To be held at Capel Manor College, Enfield, on Saturday, 6 July 2013, two classes of the competiton are aimed at everyday gardeners and youngsters or schools who enjoy growing – and with a cash prize of £500 for the winner of each class there should be plenty of incentive to produce a bunch of mixed sweet peas with the greatest overall appeal.

6. From Saturday girl at Ratners to big role at Dobbies.

7. Trend: Goon bag for Xmas party goers. This is a wine box skin under your armpit so you can fill up your glass without having to go to the bar.

8. Missed this in Sept on $125m fine for selling pesticide-infected bird food.