A(nother) New Chapter
A long, long read including GARDEN NEWS
Thursday, 14 May 2026
What do you do when someone gives you a garden?
You google ‘grow lights’.
Let’s back up.
I had dinner with my cousin, Ruth, last night.
Wait, back up.
There was an 8-year age gap between my mother and her next elder sister, Tessa (and a full 10 years between my mum and her eldest sister).
Middle daughter, Tessa, got married and had two sons. She was young. Like, really young. At least by modern standards. Of course, by the standards of her contemporaries in the early 1970s it wasn’t that unusual to get married and have babies before you were in your mid-20s.
Tessa’s eldest son grew up and married his University sweetheart and they also started having children young. Like really young. And in their case it really was unusual by the standards of their contemporaries in the early 2000s.
That is how we end up, Ruth and I, having Yard Sale pizza and San Pele (it’s a school night, after all), as first cousins once removed, one of us in our early-20s and the other in our mid-to-late-30s.
In addition to being my first cousin once removed, Ruth is a friend. She is one of the most luminous, grounded, smart, empathic, driven, kind, brilliant, self-assured people I’ve ever met. Forget everything you’ve heard about Gen Z, they have been sent to save us.
Ruth lives in a tiny-weeny flat in South East London. Tiny. Weeny. The building is sinking into the ground so that the wind whips violently through the deep cracks in the walls. Nothing is being done about it due to years-long litigation between the freeholder, the leaseholders, and the insurance company. But that is all very much beside the point.
Outside of Ruth’s tiny-weeny, slowly collapsing flat is an enormous garden. A private, enormous garden. And she has really, I think it is fair to say, only the most limited interest.
When I was about Ruth’s age, Tessa’s two sons bet me £50 that before my 30th birthday I was ask for cuttings from their gardens. Never mind that I didn’t know what ‘cuttings’ were, I laughed in their face and happily shook on the bet. Such was my disdain for gardening - a hobby enjoyed by my older, uncool, middle-aged cousins - that there was no doubt in my mind I would win the bet. Which I did. Comfortably.
Then, three years ago, I set up a WhatsApp group called ‘Gardeners Anon’ and added my cousins.
“Hello. My name is Lucy, and I… LIKE GARDENING” I wrote.
Since then, ‘Gardeners Anon’ has expanded to include all of the gardeners in our family (and, more recently, extended family).
Mainly, the group is full of vegetables and bragging. We are a family of competitive allotmenteers. Except me of course. They send pictures of prize-worthy hauls of courgettes - the result of months of careful tending and toil - and I send them a picture of an iris that I just planted a few weeks ago; LOOK PRETTY IRIS.
But Ruth, my miraculous, extraordinary, first-cousin-once-removed has offered me her garden. Completely free rein.
The garden is all lawn. Just one huge (for London) lawn. There is a small shed in the back right corner.
That is the closest thing to a white blank page that a gardener can get.
So where do you start?
Well, you send several overwhelming grateful texts to Ruth, to start.
Then, you google ‘grow lights’.
You order two, industrial sized.
And then you go to Chiltern Seeds and start adding to cart.
A brand new garden, falling into one’s lap, out of the blue (now actually thundercloud-grey) sky, where there was already a limited gardening budget, in mid-May?
The answer is seeds.
This opportunity allows me to have the cutting garden I have always wanted. Nigella, cornflower, cosmos, zinnia, corncockle, ammi, chinese aster, amaranthus, sweet peas, larkspur, strawflowers, didiscus, orlaya, cerinthe.
And then, of course, I can recreate a miniaturised version of the Barn’s orchard. The thing I will miss the most about being there (aside from my sweet neighbours). So, plum, apple and pear trees - perhaps has cordons against the long, uninterrupted fencing.
And, of course along with elaborately trained fruit trees naturally comes a potager! Neat rows of lettuce, runner beans, perhaps some prize-worthy courgettes of my own, set out in a formal fashion like in the Potager du Roi, with trained fruit trees criss-crossing every wall.
“A POND!” texts Rukmini Iyer (who, of course, is my first port of call for exciting garden news), “Frogs!”
“A POND!” I write back, wondering how Ruth would feel about attracting pond wildlife into her garden, and then thinking of the pond planting - irises, bee’s primrose, water lilies!
“How does your cousin feel about chickens?” Mini asks.
“I was wondering this TOO” I reply, trying to remember that Ruth has offered a gardening space, not an unpopulated farm yard.
Friday, 15 May 2026
Norman the Norfolk comes over for the day, and I struggle to get anything done. Nonetheless, the seed sowing must begin in earnest and as soon as possible.
I had quarantined the seeds for my garden this year into their own, special tupperware, but now I dig into my main stash - a large wooden box with seeds organised into freezer bags labelled with a Sharpie. Time is of the essence, and we must use what is already at hand.
I tear over to my local garden centre, try to negotiate around it with three dogs, and buy blocks of the Mr Fothergill’s Peat Free Seed Compost. I have been saving my take out cups for potting on, but instead sow straight into them.
Amazingly, my industrial-sized grow lights arrive. I assemble them and the chic shelving I have installed in my kitchen and ‘styled’ only days earlier now look like they are in the home of an industrial pot grower. The whole kitchen is lit up like an aeroplane bathroom. But so be it.
Many of my seeds are a couple of years old now, and I experience analysis paralysis as I try to decide what to sow given it is already mid-May. Consequently and inevitably, I end up with a completely incoherent collection of things - strawflowers, cosmos, nigella, more cosmos, didiscus, orlaya. No matter.
Saturday, 16 May 2026
I travel into town to meet a friend for brunch and stumble into the midsts of the racist rally.
The hateful jeers echo for a mile around where they are beginning their vile parade down Kingsway. It is impossible not to cry. I can’t hear the words they are chanting - I don’t need to to know their intent.
Just behind Kingsway I stop on the pavement. A man has broken away from a group of three men heading to the march - I know because one has a St George’s flag tied around his shoulders. The man stumbles over to a council employee who is cleaning the street of all their rubbish. He gets too close. He gases into the man’s face “where can we get a beer, d’ya know?”
It is 10am. The man - still too close - says more but I am on the opposite pavement and can’t hear. I don’t move.
The man’s two companions walk over to reabsorb their friend into their sick little gang. But not before the man offers the council employee a fist bump, which he takes up. He has little choice - the man is holding a fist up to his face.
The three men begin to walk up the road, but then one stops, turns - the one wearing the flag like a child would wear a tea towel and call himself a superhero - and glares back at the man sweeping up the trash. He stands and stares.
I stay, and move on only when the three white men have passed along the road to join the corralling crowd.
I am twenty minutes late to brunch and tearful. I watch as streams of people walk passed the windows as we eat and catch up. Families - Mum, Dad and kids - but mostly men. Gangs of men. Gangs of white men.
What do they want? They have free-at-point-of-access education, free-at-point-of-access healthcare, they have a social safety net (what is left of it after the last right-wing mob tore it to pieces for 15 years) that would provide housing, income, and job-search support. They have roads and freedom and public transport and systems and protections and rights and a vote.
What do they want?
Power, dominance, whiteness.
This is my city. I walked Kingsway every day for years on my commute. This is where I live. Where I was born and raised.
I read later that the march is bought and paid for (and pushed across social platforms to infinity) by Elon Musk. Steve Bannon was due to speak.
This is my city.
They fill my city with their plaintive cries of rage, and - in turn - hate fills my heart.
Sunday, 17 May 2026
I take the dogs up to Clapham Common for their usual run around.
There is some commotion. Groups of people.
Exhausted, aching they stagger across the finish line, cowboy hats askew.
They have walked across London, across the night. They hold hands, four abreast, as they take the final step.
Men stand around wearing ‘Dad’s Taxi Service’ T-shirts, and holding phones aloft.
Glitter make up smudged across exhausted faces, crumpled leg warmers, crushed feather boas, tangles of bright, plastic necklaces.
I have stumbled across the finish line for The MoonWalk London. These women - mostly women - have walked the distance of a marathon, starting at 10:30pm.
I stand and clap. The dogs are confused. I holler and whistle and scream. ‘YOU’RE AMAZING’! For a few minutes I am a one woman cheering section. Tears again, but this time at the strength and unity of these women - crossing the finish line, exhausted, holding hands.
The antidote.
And then it is time to go and visit my new garden.
Mini met me there with Pepper and the girls. A picnic was enjoyed. No gardening was achieved.
I asked the girls what I should plant in the garden. Their requirements as follows:
Apple juice
Dandelions
(after some very leading questions) a pink rose
As we sit and observe it is daunting to note that the garden gets very little light.
Along the sunny side of the garden, the sun is mostly blocked by number of very tall trees, and my dreams of splitting the space into quadrants and having a potager, an orchard, a cutting garden and a parterre are crushed.
Monday 28 May 2026
Rita Konig says you never start designing a room by choosing the colour of the walls, but by planning the layout.
Robert Kime always started his designs with a rug.
I start with roses.
Once Mini and I discuss how beds can be carved out to receive some amount of light, with divine shade planting as a backdrop, my enthusiasm returns.
‘But what is the colour scheme?’ asks Mini. For a long time I do not answer.
And then it comes to me:
Shell pink.
Leaving the Barn, the rose I was most sad to let go of was ‘Felicia’. She is such a pretty shell pink. Unusual, subtle, sophisticated.
In contrast to the rest of the family, Ruth and her siblings have the colouring of a gaggle of Swedish milkmaids (sorry, sorry, Eli, umm) and Swedish milkmen. Shell pink with pale yellows, light blues, and maybe some white seems the most suitable scheme for her garden.
I order ‘Felicia’ again, having re-homed all of the roses from the Barn weeks ago.
But this is my addiction. So along with ‘Felicia’, I order ‘Joie de Vivre’, ‘Chandos Beauty’, ‘Aphrodite’, ‘Mme Alfred Carriere’, ‘Penny Lane’, ‘Cecile Brunner’, and ‘Clair’.
So much for only begging, borrowing, and coercing plants for this garden, I have now spent £162.15 on eight roses (inc shipping). But, all were ordered from Cottage Memories and Trevor White Roses, my two favourite (and most reasonable) suppliers. And honestly, it still feels like an incredible deal.
Mini also has suggestions. I wonder if this summer will be the moment that I learn to share.
Also to my astonishment under the relentless encouragement of my industrial grow lights several of my seed babies have already germinated! Cosmos! Strawflowers! Zinnias! I have created a world without darkness! Only light! In this brave new world of retina-searing lumens where it is never night, I can grow anything! ANYTHING! I AM ALL POWERFUL. I CAN CONTROL THE WEATHER, THE LIGHT, THE PLANTS. I AM GODLIKE.
Now if only I could find where I packed those heat mats…
This is THE MOST WONDERFUL THING ❤️❤️❤️
Apple juice, dandelions. A pink rose. What else is there? ✨🩷