Outdoors is where I belong. Most of my friends think I am mad – 27 going on 90 they tease – but they’ll always come round for a barbecue.
My boyfriend, Ben, and I rent a red-brick terrace house in a quiet street. The tiny back garden is quite shady, but there is a patch that gets the sun and there I grow annuals such as sweet peas and the cornflower ‘Black Ball’. I love deep, rich, purply blacks with lush greens. Happy in the shade are hostas and ferns, such as the male fern (Dryopteris filix-mas) and the female fern (Athyrium filix-femina) and a hydrangea (H. anomala subsp petiolaris) climbing the wall. To add to the jungly feel, I have a castor oil plant (Fatsia japonica) – cliched I know, but I love leafy plants. Epimedium ‘Purple Pixie’, which I brought home from the RHS Great London Plant Fair, loves it under the tree.
My parents created amazing gardens in Cornwall and I enjoyed helping them from a young age. I found the bookish side of school very difficult; I could always draw you a picture to explain something, but reading was a struggle. I used to stutter. As a teenager I lost interest in gardening completely. I studied fine art at university and after that I went travelling in Asia and volunteered, mainly outdoors. I felt that, at last, I had found my direction.
I came home and studied garden design and then worked in a garden centre. I found a YouTube video about the Garden Academy, headed by the designer Adam Frost, and it was a “Yes, it’s me!” moment. I helped build Adam’s Chelsea show gardens last year and this. Now I am employed in his studio, helping pull design packages together, and I won gold at the RHS Flower Show at Tatton Park with my own show garden. My career in horticulture is taking me away from my garden a lot this summer. What my friends here don’t see is the new wave of young horticulturists involved in the show circuit.
At home I have just planted the foxglove ‘Pam’s Choice’, a salute to Chelsea, and I grew Papaver somniferum ‘Lauren’s Grape’ for Tatton. The opium poppy is an obvious choice for my show garden, which is called Time Is A Healer. I am even enjoying using books, to research medicinal herbs and physic gardens.
My favourite spot
By the back door, on my bench, with my dog, Gypsy. I am surrounded by my herb pots, and next to a jasmine.
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