In the interim we will have to make do with a summary of what has gone before. I'm not sure what that is really, as I am making this up as I go along, typing every day whatever comes into my head and finding old photographs to back it up. I suppose I have been trying to debunk the myth that gardening is a career for placid, quiet types, who go gently upon their ground plant-whispering their way through an idyllic life, until retirement brings them eternal peace in their allotment, chewing on a piece of straw with string tied round the knees of their breeches. I don't know how it was in years gone by, but it seems from my experience that gardening is an aggressive business, like most other jobs in the modern world. You have to be prepared to fight your corner and have to be steely enough to win your battles, at however great a cost that may be to your mental well-being. You have to be able to fight psychologically, and on occasions you may be called upon to stand your ground physically. You are going to be under attack from outsiders, managers, staff and contractors, and if you are going to make an impression, you have to beat all these off with a big stick. You have to out-arrogant the arrogant, out-threaten the threatening, stand nose-to-nose with the violent and never flinch. Yet at the same time, you have to gently nurture the good guys, the ones who want to learn, the few who love the work as much as you do, and the even fewer who get what it is that you are trying to do, those who understand your vision. I haven't come across many of those in my time. It remains to be seen whether that is a result of the peculiarity of my vision, or the rigidity of horticultural training which holds people back from that last creative leap, as if bungeed to the wall with strong elastic.
The fact is that it is a beautiful job, by far the most complex of all the arts, and once you have recognised that, in order to pursue it, you have to be prepared to lash out at all the unwanted distractions that will come at you trying to undermine your forward progress. You have to be sure of yourself, even in the rarefied, genteel environment of historic gardens. You have to dig in to resist the destructive forces, and you have to be prepared to come out fighting where necessary. I have never had a job where that has not applied, even as a single-handed employee. When you are running a garden which belongs to an organisation, you always have managers who do not understand what it is that you do. Who only see your role in terms of their own professional specialism and who manage you accordingly. On the other hand, this can apply even more in private service, which I vowed right at the beginning of my career never to meddle with. Sometimes we make ourselves promises we cannot keep.
Remember that this is not just a potted history of my career. There are lessons to be learnt here. Lessons about art, about temerity, arrogance even, about how dynamism can make history, but can also destroy it. Keep reading. It will all become clear.
Today's picture is a cartoon. Love and pain among the flowers. It is titled 'Come On You Gorgeous Beast, You're Gonna Have My Babies'. Size approx. 380 x 540mm.
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