Once a friend told me “Gardening is all hard work and disappointment.” Well yes to the hard work, but along with the disappointment you get some successes too: the fantastic buzz of picking your own broad beans, the smell of the lawn just cut, or burying your nose in that wonderful rose with the crazy French name “Cuisse de nymphe emu” (Aroused nymph’s thigh — generally more prudishly labelled “Great Maiden’s Blush” in the UK).
Home & Garden
Home & Garden
I’ve lived in the Cotswolds for over forty years. My first house was a big old house with a ramshackle garden with the bones of good design still visible in the trees and hedges. When we took possession, I couldn’t tell an oak from an ash, had never grown so much as a tomato plant, and had little idea where to begin. But ignorance truly is bliss, and gardening quickly became addictive. I loved all my attempts at tree planting, making borders, growing veg – until they failed.
Explore Home & Garden articles
View all articles
Home & Garden
Pure Prue Homeware
I’m on a mission to colour-up the world! And my latest venture is a homewares range called Pure Prue, available from www.uniqueandunity.co.uk We are starting with a small collection of...
Home & Garden
Christmas Cheer. Or not…a couple of seasonal stories
Christmas in our family seems to guarantee tears and tantrums as well as jingle bells and jollity. Indeed, in my childhood, “feeling Christmassy” meant feeling thoroughly over-wrought or bad tempered,...
Home & Garden
Our New Garden – one year on!
Our new garden, like almost all gardens, is a mix of delight and disappointment. The delight comes from the new trees, mostly doing well and the grass gardens, which survive...
Home & Garden
Picnic Parties
A picnic can be as low key or as high brow as you want but for me, the perfect picnic is simple food, with great friends/ family in a shady...
Home & Garden
New Kitchen
Not too many cooks get the chance to design their own kitchens. And I’ve had the good fortune to do that quite a lot in my long life: in my...
Home & Garden
Summer Gardening
SUMMER GARDEN I used to think cooking much more satisfying than gardening because a morning’s work produced results by lunchtime. But as I’ve got older and wiser I’ve realised that...