When I envisaged my LLFOG project, right from the start, I wanted it to be a collaborative venture.
I enjoy musing and writing about my own garden, but I’m also really interested in having a conversation about yours.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who is as curious about gardeners as I am about their gardens.
What makes a Carol Klein, a Joe Swift, or a Monty Don tick as human beings I often wonder whilst they enthuse in presenter-mode about blight-free tomato varieties, or taking a lavender cutting.
What makes them tick is their passion for gardening, you might say. True, but if gardens, as Robert Dash suggests, are a form of autobiography, then maybe our gardens are also another way for us to understand ourselves and each other.
That’s my initial hypothesis. But let’s not get too grand about it either. What I most want to do is have some nice chats with other people who are into gardening, plus the opportunity to enjoy each other’s mini eden projects whether these are created on a balcony, an allotment, or a suburban back yard like the one I look out onto whilst writing this.
My previous conversation project was also a collaborative one, a podcast called Read Me Something You Love, which as the title has it, I would pop over to someone’s home, they’d read me something they love, we’d chat about the text they’d chosen, and then I’d release the results as a lovingly edited podcast.
I’m going to be doing something similar here over the next year or two, through all four seasons, visiting anyone who is happy to talk to me about their gardening life, recording and then making small audio-visual mementoes of my visit like the one I’ve just done with Elayne and Jim Coakes. Elayne and Jim very kindly responded to my request for a chat after I’d visited their garden as part of the NGS initiative.
If you’d enjoy chatting to me about your garden and getting involved in this, I’d be most grateful. You don’t necessarily have to have any solemn and momentous “Life Lessons” to impart either, something interesting always comes up in the process of chatting. I’ll be doing most of these in and near London, but also happy to travel further afield too.
My email for any queries, suggestions, or invites to visit your garden and have a chat is stevewasserman AT gmail.com.
Oh, and here’s a bit more info about me and what I do when I’m not planting seeds, weeding, or dreaming about next year’s flower beds.
