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Garden Bench Interview:
With Carol Anderson, Board Director for Trellis, Director, Love Your Garden, Director, The Business PR
What is your…
Favourite plant - for summer (and year round)?
I never used to like roses, but they just keep on flowering, so I have introduced many hoping this is not a sign of old age! In winter I love white hellebores – they look great in hanging baskets at the front door and surprise everyone by having flowers in winter. Given they hang down, they are at eye level in a hanging basket. In spring I just love to see bulbs, especially tulips and unusual ones, green tipped cream ones, pinks and deep purples. Unfortunately for me it’s a battle against the squirrels to see them flower where I live just now. They dig them up and eat the bulbs unless I cover the pots with discreet chicken wire. In summer I love astrantia, blue agapanthus, persicaria, lavender, and loads more. In autumn, St John’s wort and its beautiful berries, the rowan trees, especially the ones with coral pink berries which are more unusual, the crocosmia as it almost lasts to autumn, and the acers as they change colour from green through autumn colours. They are brilliant to paint watercolours of.
Best summer gardening tip (and autumn, for those who like to plan ahead)?
Compost, compost, compost! Nearly every garden I work in professionally, we add loads of good compost in the autumn over all the beds and reap mountains of rewards in the spring and summer when everything flourishes from such a good feed.
Favourite area of your garden?
Impossible to say - but as the nights get darker and it gets a bit colder, sitting in the summer house by candlelight with a little music, looking out at the garden is a treat.
Tell us about your...
Favourite time of day in the garden? All day and all evening.
Least favourite task in the garden? None, I love gardening too much to dislike any part. Trimming and clearing brings freshness, weeding brings clarity, and planting is for the future.
Who is your gardening mentor? Chris Beardshaw, well known contributor to BBC radio GQT and to the BBC Scotland Beechgrove Garden. His RHS Chelsea Flower Show gardens, especially the plant choices, are just gorgeous and I have attended some of his courses which were inspirational. He is quite unique being both a landscape architect and a horticulturalist. Will never forget him asking us what a garden should do for you – and my reply was ‘touch your emotions…’ He agreed!
What has gardening meant to you during the last 15 months?
The world – in lockdown – watching things grow and come back to life. Seeing colour - and I have added tons more colour to my garden than ever before. Seeing the sun and feeling its rays on my skin.