I loathe nowheres - airports and bland hotels. I would rather be in an unpleasant, uncomfortable place rather than one just adrift, floating around.
I'm a great believer in trying things, so I've eaten witchetty grubs, a mountain frog, ostrich and alligator. I like tongue, I like brains and tripe.
When you plant something, you invest in a beautiful future amidst a stressful, chaotic and, at times, downright appalling world.
I was brought up a strict Christian. My father was a lay preacher, my mother a church warden. The rhythm and ritual of the Anglican Church was part of our lives.
My gardening apprenticeship was similar to the way a chimney sweep is pushed up a chimney. It was enforced by my parents, non-negotiable - it would be weeding the strawberries, mowing the grass.
We are extremely uncomfortable with the spiritual aspects of gardening, and yet most people feel it in some form or other, even if it's a sense of connection to the greater world on a beautiful day.
Sweet peas should smell. Half the point of growing sweet peas is to cut them for the house; they should fill a room with an almost painful olfactory inarticulateness. But most sweet peas smell of nothing. This does not stop them being beautiful, but they are like food with no flavour.
The biggest obstacle to good gardening is the desire to know the answers and not the questions.
Woods are rich with biodiversity and, above all, places of trees and light that spangles a thousand greens through the leaves.
There is a direct correlation between gardening and mental health, not just to maintain good mental health but to repair it as well - that's anything in the gamut from depression to serious brain damage, schizophrenia or autism.
I don't think about being the Colin Firth of the gardening world. I live a very insular world based around my family and my home, and to them I'm not the Colin Firth of anything.
Gardening is inevitably a process of constant, remorseless change. It is the constancy of that process that is so comforting, not any fixed moment.
The truth is that wreaths have never really been part of my creative life. I like them and want them and know how to do them.
A column is a curiously intimate affair. For a start, you know by default that you will have regular readers, so it gives the writer the privilege of continuing a running conversation with them.
Apples hate strong wind and damp, cold soil so try and place them on well-drained, rich soil in a sheltered position.
I think that the essence of a Christmas wreath - of all Christmas vegetative decoration - has to be green and, if possible, living. So the basis of a wreath is ideally holly, laurel, ivy, rosemary, larch, fir or whatever is to hand.
Happiness is a by-product rather than an end in itself. It pops into your life unbidden, and then tends to pop out again. I'm on record as being depressive. It is related to winter.
Pulmonarias need splitting every two or three years, as they rapidly develop into a doughnut with an empty centre that quickly gets filled with weeds.
The key to our oldest woodland is that it has been cut down and regrown, in some cases as often as 50 or 60 times. It is one of the most perfectly sustainable resources and ecosystems known to man.
We don't value food in Britain, so therefore the cheaper it is the better it is. We all eat far too much, we all pay far too little for our food. We have environmental problems, we have health problems, we have food transport problems.
