I grew up in Herefordshire in the 1980’s. I didn’t appreciate it at the time but it was a golden age for music and also represented a special time for me in my discovery of the joy of gardening.

I catch myself talking to work colleagues who were born decades after I had left school and think to myself that I sound like a grumpy old man. I tell them that the music all sounds the same now and that the music when I was a teenager was incredible. They normally do that rolling of the eyes thing and I know that they have already stopped listening. It doesn’t matter, I know that I am right, it is the birth right of the young and uninitiated to ignore the wisdom of the old. I remember thinking that anyone over the age of 30 was ancient and irrelevant. Now is the payback, I get to be old and irrelevant to the youth of today.

I have such wonderful memories of the music and gardening, in the 80’s there was no digital music, no streaming service, no internet. If you wanted music you either listened to it on the radio or you went to a record shop and bought a single or an album. There was the option to record music directly from the radio onto tape and remember recording the chart rundown every week with my sister. If there was someone you were romantically interested in you made them a mix-tape of your favorite songs.

I am sticking to my view about the music and I realize how wonderfully spoiled we were. This was the age of global superstars, with the likes of Prince, Queen, David Bowie, Tina Turner, Kate Bush, The Eurythmics, Michael Jackson, Abba, The Clash and Dire Straights. I could continue the list but you get my point.

I have always been passionate about 2 things, the love of plants and the love of music. Music is the photo album of my life and gardening the calming, soothing and grounding elixir.

My interest in gardening started on a farm, where we rented the farm house. It was called Green Farm, and had a good-sized garden. I am really a lover of beautiful flowers but I remember that the first thing that I grew as a 12-year old child was a crop of potatoes. It wasn’t until we moved into a new home that I developed my love affair with flowers.

The house was in a village called Peterchurch, in the Golden Valley and had a front and back garden. The back garden had previously been a vegetable garden and to the front of the house was a straight, central path flanked on either side by grass. I removed the grass and dug a meter-wide bed on either side. I grew Lupins and delphiniums from seed and whilst these were growing on, I heaped half a meter of horse manure on the bare soil. Luckily there was a riding stables just around the corner, it was close enough to wheelbarrow manure directly from the stables to the garden.

Once the manure had leached some of its goodness into the soil I forked it over, gently mixing the Herefordshire Red Marl soil with the horse manure. I then placed the pots on the soil until I had an arrangement that I liked and then planted them, keeping them well watered all summer. As a novice gardener, I had no idea what I was doing but just kind of went with the flow. Luckily, nature did its thing and I was rewarded with the most glorious display of tall delphinium flowers that seemed to be constantly filled with bees. I was hooked, I have had times since then, when life has just got in the way of gardening and my soul has suffered from deprivation.

I feel at the moment,as I hurtle towards 60 at an alarming rate, that I am coming out of a long winter in my life and am filled with the joy and hope of new possibilities and an emotional and spiritual rebirth. I treated myself to a record player recently and I have rediscovered the absolute joy of handling and listening to records. As I write this I am listening to the Nora Jones Album “Come away with me”, crackles and all. When the rain eases off, I will go to the greenhouse and inspect the pots of delphinium seeds that I set 3 weeks ago, hopefully searching for the first signs of life.

For those of you that have grown plants from seed before, you will know how wonderful it is when the first seeds start to germinate.

As part of my delphinium obsession, I am collecting the seeds of as may varieties as I can find, which I will sow and incorporate into my delphinium collection. Some old varieties are already hard to find but I will keep searching, in the hope of growing and preserving them for future generations. I will take cuttings (mostly crow bud cuttings) from next year so that these wonderful varieties can be shared with other gardeners.

Here are some pictures of last year’s flowers, the flower spikes are always smaller in the first year and for delphiniums to do really well they need to be planted in the ground about 1 meter apart and staked.

I am looking forward to seeing how well they do this year and by how much I can increase the collection of these wonderful plants. I find that if they are kept well watered they are healthy and robust and attract lots of bees and other pollinators.

If you are looking for good companion plants, I would suggest peonies, Phlox, and roses. You can also dry the petals to make confetti or cut the stems to create the most beautiful flower arrangements. Due to their height you need a big vase, on the floor, against a tall plain wall.

If you have any questions, please send me an email and if you have any older varieties let’s do a plant or seed exchange.

I wish you all a wonderful Spring, get out there and feed your plants and your Soul.