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About me

On writing

I’ve always wanted to be a writer but for a long time lacked confidence and opportunity. When I was eight or nine I remember sitting down with my gran and writing little story books about talking furniture and also making little books out of old editions of Look In magazines and writing articles about Abba. My teenage years were a bit of a desert but when I got to University I wrote for student newspapers and magazines. I started my professional writing career working on careers books along with the odd magazine and newspaper article.I’ve worked for the Centre’s publications department for several years, both as editor and marketing manager. During my time there I launched The Little Book of Slugs and created with my friend Chloe Ward two award winning educational show gardens at the Gardeners World Live event at the NEC – one promoting the use of environmentally friendly alternatives to the chemical slug pellet and the other the use of kitchen waste for making compost. The latter won CAT a prime time slot on the BBC Gardeners’ World Live TV programme with Monty Don.It’s only since going part time that I’ve been able to focus on what I really want to do. Since 2004 I’ve written The Little Book of Garden Heroes (with a chapter by Chloe), The Little Book of Garden Villains, 52 Weeks to Change Your World and Curious Incidents in the Garden at Night-time: the fantastic story of the disappearing night – a meditation on global warming, species extinction and the garden at night. This is my favourite book and also the hardest to write. It’s a cross between fiction and non fiction and features some beautiful illustrations by Chloe. I wanted to write more fiction in 2006 but was asked to write The Organic Garden instead (again with a chapter by Chloe - this time on growing food). I’m not sure which way to go now but I’m enjoying writing a column for Garden News magazine.

On writing books

My favourite writing book is On Writing Well by William K Zinsser. This gave me the confidence and skills to write in a different way and I’d recommend it to anyone. I re-read it every year to remind myself. People say you can’t be taught how to write. I think its true that you can’t learn style. That’s something from within. But you can be taught technique and without technique you can’t begin to build style. Quite often style will come once you have mastered technique. You gain confidence and move on. On Writing Well helps you to understand technique. That’s why it’s always good to go back to.

On gardening

I’ve always been interested in gardening. When I lived in Lancashire in the seventies there was a garden at school where we grew lots of veg, and one at home where we grew just potatoes. I always remember the potato harvest as being a big thing. We weren’t well off and the spuds were a good home harvest. My mum and Dad broke up when I was one so we’ve always got by on my mums wage. When we moved to Lincolnshire we found a house with a huge garden, orchard, fruit cage, peach tree, veggie plot. Houses were cheap there and there was a great tradition of home gardening. One year me and a neighbour ran a small veggie growing business. We sold our produce to the local shop. We ended up spending quite a lot on chemicals for the garden (unnecessarily) and we didn’t make much money. Then my mum sold the patch of ground to the neighbours and that was the end of that.When I moved to Wales after being a student in Hull for five years (I have a degree in Economic and Social History and an MA in International Relations) I re-discovered gardening. I helped out occasionally in the CAT gardens and then worked for a year as an organic veg box gardener. This was trial by error but I came out the other end with a love of gardening, but no plot to tend. After that I worked as a part time gardener in a private garden and on home gardening projects in rented places, until I found myself in possession of a house and garden that I can work with relative stability. The garden belongs to Chloe and I (we used to be together) but I have current residency. We have a similar style of gardening so long term the garden will remain a haven for wildlife.Over the last few years I have made a conscious decision to spend more time in my own garden – feeling like many people my age (I’m 37) that there is more to life than office work – even if it is working for a great cause. I now work two days a week for CAT and spend the rest of my working life researching, writing and gardening. For the past two years I have been transforming a damp shady north facing rubbish filled plot into something resembling a garden – there’s still a long way to go. With limited time and a difficult garden for vegetables I spend a lot of time managing the wild resources already available in the garden, encouraging the growth of wild flowers and a few chosen plants while keeping down the weeds and maintaining essential structural elements such as pond, hedgerows and flora rich slate walls. For me at least half the joy of gardening is exploring the fauna of the garden and finding out all about the wonderful creatures that inhabit the same space.I am not a career gardener. I decided after my stint as an organic grower that writing was more important to me. I have an in-built need to communicate. Never the less I think that everyone should go through the process of learning how to create and manage a garden space. When I’m in my garden working on a project nothing else matters. Perhaps it’s the same when I’m writing too, although sometimes I get distracted and go to the garden instead. I think I have become more anti-social since I started on my garden. If it’s a choice between the beach and my garden, the garden usually wins. It just feels like the right thing to do. When I’m in my garden I get a real sense that I’m improving something. This is incredibly empowering and at the same time grounding. If I go to the beach I’m just using what’s already there. I’m not really engaging with the natural world. A garden has its own story and being part of a story is very rewarding.No one is grounded any more. We’ve forgotten how important land is, and the environment has suffered as a result. How can you love the environment if it means nothing to you? If someone put a bulldozer through my garden I couldn’t just shrug my shoulders and get on with life. I would feel real pain at the loss. I feel great empathy for those allotment holders who might lose their plots to the Olympics. The plots have been evolving for a hundred years. The Olympics will be over in four weeks.The modern mania for travel is another sympton of this disassociation from the land. People roam the world in search of life changing experiences. What we really need to do is improve the world around us. I am not an Alan Titchmarsh type with endless knowledge about gardening. Don’t ask me questions about roses. I’m an ordinary gardener learning more every year. Maybe by the time I’m a hundred I’ll know enough to be satisfied. Until then I’ll keep on learning and playing my part in the landscape.I think in a different way to many gardeners. For one thing I’m keen to see what the soil throws up rather than go out and buy in a load of plants. My soil has precocious amounts of foxgloves, red campion, columbine and Cambrian poppy so I’m editing big banks of these. This means removing the invasive weeds like grass, nettles, brambles and creeping buttercup and letting the useful wild flowers dominate. All these have flowers that are popular with pollinating insects. Once you’ve got a good covering of strong but useful wild flowers like these, the other weeds become less dominant. I’ve also got a variety of smaller ordered beds, which I cultivate in the more traditional way. These are in the sunnier spots where I can grow veggies, herbs and fruit. Even so they are still small areas.Because I am an environmentalist I am always torn between knowing more about gardening and keeping up with wider environmental issues. It’s very easy for me living in Wales in my little cottage with my wood stove and my organic garden to think I’m doing my bit for the environment but it’s not enough. We’re all in the present environmental crisis together and this demands a level of engagement with each other we have not seen since the Second World War.

On gardening books

I’ve read a lot of gardening books but the ones I like most are sometimes the more unexpected volumes. I love anything by Lawrence Hills. He’s the founding father of the modern organic gardening movement but has been lost to a modern audience. He’s a proper old fashioned gardener who started work on nurseries well before the second world war and created a vision of organic gardening when many of his contemporaries switched over to chemicals. He was not afraid to experiment and his love of comfrey is infectious. If you want to know the worst side of chemical use you can still do no better than Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. This is the classic book that launched the modern environmental movement. For something more spiritually satisfying I’d recommend The Man Who Planted Trees and Robert Hart’s The Forest Garden (describing a potentially revolutionary style of organic gardening based on the English woodland). For practical reference books I’d go for the HDRA Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening, the RHS Encyclopedias and Vegetables, Herbs and Fruit by Flowerdew, McVicar and Biggs.

On the environment

Strangely, as I don’t watch it anymore, I’ve learnt some of the most important things in life from television. I wanted to be a writer after my A level history teacher gave me a copy of the TV broadcast of the RSC’s Nicholas Nickleby. They played it over several weeks and the live studio audience had to keep on coming back to watch the next part – just as Dickens intended. I was a fat kid at school and I learnt how to lose weight by watching a programme called Go For It. When I was eighteen or nineteen Channel Four ran a series about the environment. It changed my life. They broadcast a programme about global warming and I remember thinking, shit this stuff is important. The next term at university I signed up for Friends of the Earth. I ended up running the group, organising a green fair, creating a green pack for every new student and joining the university union council to change union policy about the environment. Everything was so slow. It took me a year to get them to move the recycling facilities to a place where more students could use them. Naming the student union bar The Chico Mendes Bar was easier. Chico Mendes was shot for trying to protect the Amazon rainforests from loggers. You can still see the plaque celebrating his life in Hull University Union. Working as an environmentalist is one of the hardest things I’ve had to do. But not in comparison with what people like Chico Mendes had to deal with. Listening to people dismissing your views as extreme, badly thought out, pie in the sky is relentless and depressing. You have to really believe in yourself and the value in living life in a different way to the norm. In the early days there were no jobs either. I left university in the middle of the early nineties recession and the environment was the last thing on people’s minds. Things are different now – organics, renewable energy, energy conservation, eco-building, fair trade, ethical investment – they’re all providing great employment opportunities. It feels totally normal to behave in an environmentally responsible manner. As far as I’m concerned the arguments have been won. It’s just a question of implementing the changes we need to make before the climate succumbs to ever lasting damage. Things are much more urgent now. Even five years ago we were talking about climate change as if it was a problem for our grand children. It isn’t any more. It’s our problem. In his book Six Degrees Mark Lynas outlines the view of many climate scientists that we only have eight years to start sorting out global CO2 emissions. I used to be quite depressed about the environment but I’ve got over that. I think its better to tackle a problem with fun and a good sense of humour. I’ve been lucky in my work. My office is a very cool place to work. I work with some lovely people – Graham, Caroline, Christian and Hannah – and there’s a lot of laughing going on most of the time. We’re big fans of music in the office. Although we’ve had some crises in the past we’ve always got through them. When you’re tackling big issues its important to have people around you who are supportive and fun.

On life

Outside of gardening and writing I have a whole raft of other interests, including dancing (currently learning swing and salsa), the piano and acting (I’ve hammed my way through The Importance of Being Earnest, Cabaret, Blood Brothers, Under Milk Wood). I love amateur dramatics when it is performed well and have written several local pantomimes and shows. I still harbour a not so secret desire to write my own fully fledged musical. I love music and festivals and work each year at Glastonbury and the Big Green Gathering. My favourite Glastonbury venue: The American Diner in Lost Vagueness. I’m really getting into the retro swing thing at the moment and hope to find myself some retro outfits to ware for various tea dances, swing parties and so on. I love dressing up and the whole forties, fifties era appeals to me. People have often said I was born in the wrong era. I love black and white movies like The Philadelphia Story, Mr Smith Goes to Washington, It Happened One Night, His Girl Friday, not to mention all the Humphrey Bogart classics. My favourite movies – Breakfast at Tiffany’s, It’s A Wonderful Life, To Kill a Mockingbird, Lawrence of Arabia – the classics. But also Baghdad Café, A Room for Romeo Brass, Before Sunset; And if I need cheering up – any musical. I’ve just bought an ipod and am discovering podcasts for the first time. I walk around the house listening to all the environmental ones you can download from itunes. They’re almost all American but the news is just as valid over here. For positive stuff try Living Green Effortless Ecology. For more hard hitting news try Grist or PRI: Living on Earth.