My response to the correspondence is that I am astonished by it. This is all gardens-in-the-head, not about real gardens and still less about making a garden. Let them re-read Kipling’s ‘The Garden’? And how can anyone say there is no guilt involved? You cannot put your foot out of doors without saying to yourself ‘Oh my God, that needs pruning/feeding/mulching/ deadheading/cutting back/moving/removing/whatever and I should have done it before and don’t see how it’s going to get done this week.’ This is the sort of thing that one thinks about in the night. Plus whatever it is that one wants to do next, and how to do it. It’s all about process, it’s never over, never complete, never neither too thin or too crowded, except perhaps for three perfect days in late June about four years into the making of a garden. That on-goingness is the charm, and the mistakes, and the serendipities, and the cycles of growing and decaying. And why do I like doing this stuff? It’s a way of being outside and alone, legitimately, in a crowded life. It’s yes, selfishly sensual.
It’s also about control, and creating islands of order in a scarily uncontrollable world - all gardeners are closet authoritarians. Why is something that is not OK within a walled garden perfectly OK outside it? Because gardens are about creating thresholds - dangerous places always - between the tame and the wild, the framed and the unframed. And it’s a way of letting your thoughts work wordlessly through your fingers. But I do see that gardening is not what you guys are on about, so excuse me. But tell me again - what is it exactly that you are all on about?!

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