Jeff, Pete and Chelsea too

It’s that time of year again where I tend to feel grossly inadequate. Well, maybe I exaggerate but I’m not far off the mark. You see, not only has spring well and truly sprung, but it’s Chelsea Flower Show time, that bastion of green fingers, RHS membership wielding people in macs knocking back bottles of booze like it’s a PTA fundraising quiz, and well, flowers & gardens… and this is where the inadequacy comes in.

Pete the Palm

I’ve grown up around gardens see, my mum has the greenest of fingers, and the loveliest of gardens. Unfortunately while green fingers may be her anatomical forte her back isn’t. It’s like a barometer of gardening. You don’t need the BBC weather to tell you when it’s sunny outside, just a chat to see if she’s put her back out recently, for sure as eggs is eggs, when the weather is nice mum is outside gardening… and 2 days later laid up in bed with back pain from crouching down to pull out those accursed weeds that inevitably sneak past her Gaealike guard in winter months. And she’s not the only one with the gardening genes, my cousin Maddie also has a keen interest in all things green. Unfortunately, it’s more grey than green at the moment, possibly due to an aesthetic choice, though I hazard it's more likely due to a house by the sea & a stiff salty breeze. Either ways, I’m sure that will be rectified soon, why so? Well mostly cos they’ve all been off to Chelsea with their mates this week and boy am I jealous.

Being like many people my age (& income) living in London, a garden is an aspiration way out of my reach, for now at least. It’s one of those things other people have, you know, the ones with more years, income and children in the grand building society of life. But for now it is  something I can only yearn for, which is a real shame because as we all know, plants are good for you. According to them white coated, green fingered science boffins (science people are ALWAYS boffins), gardening is good for you. It reduces blood pressure while simultaneously increasing brain activity & a general sense of well being (boffins sadly don’t mention mum’s back however). Plants themselves offer numerous benefits, they improve air quality, reduce stress (with the exception of anyone trying to grow pumpkins on their windowsill that is… more on that later), they make people calmer & happier, they pump out oxygen and research states that when used in shopping malls, they can increase shopper stay-time by half an hour. Now my humble abode is no Mall of America, nor do I wish to bribe people into staying longer for dinner simply by the subtleties of my glistening foliage, but apart from that, these all seem like Very Good Things, which is why my lack of gardening skills saddens me so.

The Sophington Towers Hothouse starring 
Jeff stage left, Spike stage right

I’ve tried gardening but more often than not that trying has gone hand in hand with failing… spectacularly. From old shared houses where we tried to grow a green luscious lawn each year without fail (except we did fail… no doubt in part due to the presents left to us by our generous neighbours), to some equally rubbish university experiments with my flatmates to bloom something more ‘home grown’ shall we say. And let us not forget the random trial of potted pumpkins several years ago. Who was I to know that pumpkins needed to trail their vines and weren’t best suited to a windowsill?  I currently have a collection of green growers, including friendship plants, the odd phallically shaped cactuses (cacti?) as well as a very green thing I’ve called Jeff and his mates Pete the Palm & Spike the umm, well unknown spiky plant. So I’m trying, honestly I am. But due to the evidence of many plant deaths in my growing history, my fear is that it is surely only a matter of time before Jeff & co. depart to the great garden in the sky. I worry that the green fingers may be skipping a generation, but I'm resolved. This year it’s going to be different. This year, inspired by my cousin, mum & their chums’ glorious Chelsea pictures on Facebook, I’ve made a new resolution… Try harder, MUCH harder, if only so I can practice for when I’m grown up, with my mum’s green fingered reputation to protect.  Will I succeed? Who knows, I can only hope so for the sake of Jeff, Spike, Pete & their other leafy chums. Come talk to me in a year and we can see the results, in the meantime I’m off to pot up some seedlings and get my watering can out. 

Photosynthesis? No, photosynthesize THAT Jeff.

My windowsill pumpkin. Squash by name, squashed by nature

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