Introduction

Plants and my gardens are my pride and joy. I grow with them, and ebb through good times and bad times, always getting back to the spring in my step when we are in harmony.

When I arrived in the UK in 1998, the beauty and explosion of colour and variety, the changes of the seasons and sheer volume of new knowledge to acquire were quite overwelming.

Image2313.jpg : 2001-06-17 Walking down the rose path

This started an ongoing effort to record, in images and words, my journey. The repetitive paging through books and the internet provided the growing ground to learn, remind and recall.

This website is a celebration of the cummulate result. It is not finished, complete, accurate or comprehensive. It is what it is, a continious process of refinement, learning, capturing and deep apppreciation of the joy that I derived in my heaven.

Image2562.jpg : 1999-10-10 Me in Foxgloves

My love for gardening came from spending time with my Mother in our garden and having my own little patch in our vegetable garden. I can still remember how proud I was for walking through the sweetcorn stretching far above my head. I always had a keen interest the maintain and grow in the many gardens I had throughout my life. However, the gardens that shaped and consumed my passion were those I spent time in from 1994 onwards. That is when we moved into a loverly large property in Chesterfield Road, Brianstone, Johannesburg. It had huge pine trees facing the road, I always called it the woods and a large lawn at the back. One of the largest projects I tackled in this garden was to install a 10 000l tank and irrigation system to water the garden. We left this home in 1998 for the UK and moved into Foxgloves in Wokingham. This is where my garden diary came into being and this journal started. I wanted to know more, remember the plant names, and discover new plants and how they grow. After Foxgloves, we moved to 1 Down End in Portsmouth and this is where I am now living my passion.

I often find myself engrossed into all the tasks in the garden, making things, planting, sowing, watering and so many other tasks. Lately, I am trying to get closer to individual plants. Listening to the plant. Every plant has its own unique story and voice - be it in its leaves, stems, colour changes or growing patterns. So often it just celebrates life - even if it is just for short while. We don’t often thinking of listening to plants, we are just to much in a hurry to move on. We don’t allow enough time for them to transfer their energy to us - but for eating them, as if that is the only way to benefit and co-exist.