A Stress Free Life in the Garden

It may not seem much to you but cutting my overgrown hedge this afternoon was the application of a strong determined mind against the overriding urge to sit on the couch and read a book. I love gardens, I adore plants and flowers and home grown vegetables. Only problem is that I hate gardening. In the good old days my dad would proudly dig up his new potatoes and we’d happily devour them with lashings of butter. My sister presents her garden produce on the dinner table with great satisfaction and decorates the room with wonderful flowers, freshly cut. My other sister is training to become a Master Gardener in Albuquerque where gardening in desert conditions is not for the faint-hearted (while I was visiting her in May, another Master Gardener did faint in the heat of the blistering afternoon sunshine and was carted off in an ambulance. She had been weeding!). My daughter spends hours and hours sorting the compost; we have zillions of wiggling worms attesting to her green abilities. My brother isn’t happy if he’s not taking cuttings, chopping down trees, mowing lawns, weeding and digging, and not just in his own garden. I just wish he’d visit more often with his spade, fork, hedge trimmer, seedlings, cuttings, and the energy to dig large holes wherever I point.

Monty Don has my utmost admiration. He’s the man from the BBC's Gardeners' World who used to make me weep with envy. But he graces our screens no longer after a minor stroke forced him to retire to his own two-acre garden. His smiling face belies his fight with depression, a fact that endears him to me even more. But he recognises that the stress he was putting himself under making such a popular show was probably to blame for his recent health problems. He said: "I do feel optimistic. But I also feel that I'm 53, both my parents died in their sixties, and you've got to leave this world in a better place that you find it. You've got take the fuckers on and not just give in."

Life is tough. We all look at successful smiling faces and reckon that they have it so good. Sure how could it be otherwise: they have fame, status, money, and good looks. But you know, I wouldn’t swap anything for my quiet life, where I can put my feet up to read without fear of letting my public down, where I am master/mistress of my own destiny and my stress levels rise but twice a year when I have to cut my overgrown hedge before the summer arrives, and after it has left abundant growth in its wake.