I have always been fascinated by ‘serendipity’, the definition of which is: finding interesting or valuable things by chance or desirable discoveries by accident. There has been quite a lot of it in the planting and growing of this podcast. This week as I set out to work on series 2 in earnest, getting down to booking recordings and seeking out the right guests to be part of the plant story conversations, it began to happen again. I discovered that a garden visit booked for next week is in fact a visit to the home of a plant hunter and I am currently seeking a plant hunter to connect to a story that takes us back into the previous century. All being well I shall explain more of this visit in the next blog!

I also found myself in a waiting room for a few hours with a mug of tea and this book in my bag - In The Garden: Essays on Nature and Growing. I was given it as a gift and I have also given it to others as a gift. But the waiting time enabled me to read it in one sitting from cover to cover. In the very first essay by Penelope Lively who was talking about her own time owning a garden listed in the Yellow book scheme and visiting the other gardens in the scheme, I read: There is no better way to garden, to get ideas, admire, fail to admire. I can remember some revelations: the National Collection of corokias in a north London garden…..The corokias interested me particularly because I have one myself - and my respects here to any reader who knows what a corokia is.”

In the past few weeks I too have visited that north London garden which is incredible and I hope that if you continue to listen to Our Plant Stories you will also, if you aren’t already, be able to say to Penelope Lively - ‘yes I know what a corokia is’ - serendipity!

I wanted to share another quote from one of the other essays that I think is very beautiful - it is from Victoria Adukwei Bulley: “Gardening, then, is the practice of sustained noticing. And though it should go without saying that open, natural space is something everyone should have immediate access to, gardening itself is not about having a garden. It is not about growing food or flowers but instead about developing our sense of how ecosystems work - and working with, not against them. And since no plant necessarily needs human help to grow if the habitat is right, it seems to me that gardening is less about growing plants than it is about growing your own understanding of how they best live. In which case, the garden is you.”

The book that I have just bought and will be putting in my bag for any of those ‘waiting moments’ is by Marchelle Farrell and is called Uprooting - from the Caribbean to the Countryside - Finding Home in an English Garden.

Have a good weekend. Sally