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I had my first post-GOTY radio interview today on BBC Radio Northampton, with Johnnie Amos on his Green Welly Show. He was a competitor himself on the programme two years ago so it was great to chat with him and share experiences. It seemed to be over very quickly,
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Winter sun has been in short supply this year. Yesterday was an exception and I sneaked off for a few minutes with the camera, leaving Roy, my Mercedes saviour, to breathe life into the near dead car on his own. (Unbelievably, after two years in pieces and three days careful
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It seems ages since my last post here, but I do have a good excuse. I've been at the new nursery 2 or 3 days a week transforming weed-riddled, pot-bound plants like these: to clean, repotted ones like these: I've worked my way through
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Our garden was mercifully unscathed by Thursday's storm, but less than a mile away several huge beech trees came down, one right next to a bungalow which now looks like a doll's house compared with the vast tree-corpse which lies next to it. At the
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Three of my four best winter scented plants are in full flower now. If the wind would only die down a down a bit, they would be softly filling the garden with their perfume. As it is, any scent they are giving off is being blown across to the east
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What a gardener needs on a chilly, damp and sunless day is a little moment of joy and today there were plenty. A song thrush sang all day from a nearby treetop, my witch hazel, Hamamellis mollis, is finally unfurling its reluctant buds and I potted up about 40 tiny,
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...when it's midwinter, raining and gloomy outside. But I've applied for a back-to-back show garden space at Tatton for 2007 and need to get my planting plan in next week. Now if only I'd started thinking about this last summer I could
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With GOTY over, life is back to normal - for the moment. The first gardening session of the new year always feels good, even if it's just an hour. It has been incredibly mild so far this winter - we have had no proper frosts at all yet. Weeds and
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I kept a blog diary before and during the filming of GOTY 2006. So if you're interested in the 'behind the scenes' story, here it is.... Read my GOTY 2006 Blog... I've still got a few more pictures to upload but Blogger seems a
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Well, if you saw the programme you'll know by now that I won... I found out for the first time tonight how we'd all done in the individual elements, and understood for the first time just how close it had been. So here are my immediate
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The four month wait is nearly over - GOTY is to be broadcast tonight at 8.15. Although I know the result, I still feel very apprehensive about the programme content. We have had no sneak preview - I'll see the programme for the first time tonight, along with about
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It's Boxing Day night and Christmas has been lovely. DB had pheasant while the girls and I had home-made wild mushroom escalopes with all the trimmings. I am now the proud owner of a pair of proper professional Felco No.7 secateurs and a beautiful book by