Garden Bench Interview with Annie McIntosh

What is your…

Favourite winter season plant?  There’s a few that I love including hamamelis and hellebores, especially the dark coloured varieties, but the one that really puts a smile on my face is winter aconites, Eranthis hyemalis. I used to have two beds of them either side of the door in one house I lived in and you couldn’t fail to be cheered up by their joyful yellow flowers. Cambo is a great place to see them alongside their wonderful snowdrop collection and delicious shortbread biscuits!

Best winter gardening tip?  Mix it up a bit and have something fun up your sleeve. I find that a lot of the jobs in winter quickly turn into chores so I try and find something creative to do to relieve the boredom. This winter we have been busy making jar terrariums with ferns and tiny conifers weeded from my mum’s garden. With a light on top they became part of the Grove light spectacular and I thought, looked fab!

Favourite area of your garden in winter? 

Definitely the polytunnel – I hate the wind so it’s lovely to be out of it and pottering in the poly. There’s always something to do and we are still cropping cavolo nero and not too fed up of it either (especially crisped up in the oven). It’s always nice to retreat to with a cup of tea and choccy biscuit too after getting jobs done outside. At the Grove we have a resident wren in the poly and it’s lovely to watch dotting about looking for food. My one at home is not much to look at yet but I look forward to the first fine evening when I can sit with a beer and survey my hard work (better get cracking on the hard work soon then…).

Tell us about your... Favourite time of day in the garden?

First thing is great at home – either when I have a full day to get stuck in and can plan what needs done or if no time at all it’s still nice to go out – perhaps to cut willow for a session that day or just see what’s looking good and how far through the daffs are. It’s a lovely way to destress at any time. At work I must admit the best time is when everyone has gone (sorry guys…) and it’s just me and the beasties – having a wander round, admiring what has been achieved that day and spotting wildlife is a perfect winddown, particularly if a fox wanders by with a nod.

Least favourite task in the garden?

Anything involving mud! That sounds a bit weird for a gardener but everything seems so muddy just now and it gets me down a bit. The site at the Grove nursery is on a slope so can get really bad at the bottom and feels like we are swimming in it some days, though it is quite funny if I have to go into the office later and don’t realise that my face is covered in mud…  The other thing I hate is clearing under the benches in the greenhouse – where do all these weeds come from! There are some very interesting ones but it’s awful hard work bending down and pulling them out… Apart from that I love everything!

Who is your gardening mentor?

It has to be my dad, even though our neighbour always said he wasn’t much of a gardener! He got me started with my own wee plot in the garden and I can still recall the excitement of buying a wee paper poke of spinkies from a stall at the market in the Green in Aberdeen. Perhaps we need to revisit their methods of selling in these days of everything in black plastic.  My favourite was dusty millers with their fantastic smell, I always wonder why they went out of fashion. Jiffy 7s were like magic to me and the smell still transports me back more years than I’d like to admit! Happy days!