The book is now published

The Haphazard Gardener was completed last year with the help and guidance of Sue Johnson - tutor with Writers' News Home Study Courses.  The words came thick and fast; suddenly I knew where the book was going and in which order to put it all together.  Sometimes one assignment critique from Sue was followed swiftly by my next finished assignment.  She spoke of 'letting her coffee go cold' whilst she read the next piece.  My confidence grew.

The manuscript has had so many read-throughs, each time I came across silly little mistakes; whether read to myself or aloud.  My daughter Sorcha gave me the final proofread. 

I offered the manuscript to several publishers and received some nice responses - but all rejections except via Vanity Publishers; some of which required a fortune to publish, whilst others were more modest.

An advert for FeedARead appeared to be the solution I was looking for.  The book is now published - privately - whilst I wait for my copy to review.  Once reviewed it will go public.  In the meantime I am working on a kindle copy.

The Book

The Haphazard Gardener has been in the 'writing' since 2002, when, whilst convalescing from major surgery, I began to write about my beautiful garden in Sussex.  Pieces of prose, thoughts about the garden, poems, were all part of my daily writing life for several weeks, whilst others worked in the garden on my behalf.  March 2003 found me hospitalised once more, yet still I 'crutched' my way around the garden with my first visitors of the new season.

The late Rosemary Verey, a family friend had suggested in 1990, that I wrote a daily journal about the garden and the jobs that need to be done.  This I did from then onwards and it is from these journals, the bones of the book took shape.

A rare treasure

Liriodendron tulipifera

A very tall specimen had become hemmed in amongst other mature trees at Orchards.  Any flowers - given their subtle colour - were difficult to see in the higher canopy.  One year at eye level these two flowers were captured on camera.  Days later a wind ripped through the lower garden and tore one third of the tree down like a huge heel cutting.  Such were the challenges of gardening at Orchards.

Verdant confusion



I loved this walk to and from the selling nursery.   I loved all the greenness, the textures and structure of the different herbaceous plants.  Any flowers were a bonus to this verdant confusion. 

A Stalwart Salvia



Salvia nemerosa 'Amethyst'



This salvia was one of the best cultivars that we grew at Orchards; flowering over a long season even without judiscious deadheading.  Loved by bees and other nectar-seeking insects; the plant hummed throughout the day.  The dun-coloured seedheads gave added attraction to the winter border.  Its placement on the widest curve of the Yew border meant that it could be viewed from several angles.

Textures and shades of green

By late May the rush of herbaceous planting overtook the fading forget-me-nots.  The borders at Orchards were full of this delightful little flower - a pleasant relief to all the yellowness of spring.  The spent plants were stripped from the ground - shaken lightly, their glossy black seeds ensured plants for the following year - and taken by the barrowload to mulch around the apple trees in the orchard.  Pools of blue for the following spring beneath the pink buds and white flowers of the apples was guaranteed.

The rough textured foliage of Geranium gracile is softened by the mottled leaves of an aquilegia seedling and pinnate leaves of Polemonium 'Lambrook Mauve'.

Spring time

This is a childhood memory of the garden at Orchards; the daffodils not yet in flower were late flowering 'pheasant eye' narcissus.  The large cherry on the left an early casualty to honey fungus which became rampant in the garden. In the immediate foreground heathers which Gay planted for low maintenance!
These were removed in the late 1970s and in the early 1990s Philip built two gravel terraces with wide steps to the lawn and more borders for a grey garden, later a grassery. On the lower terrace a long wooden bench was placed against a bank of early rhododendrons, with a view across a shady border down the vista.