Slugs and snails – the gardener’s best friends
I have been fascinated for some time by over-achievers. My own brother, for one. While simultaneously holding down a job as a partner in a West End firm of surveyors, he has a massive, self-tended show garden that would not look out of place at Chelsea. He grows purple basil with leaves the size of small envelopes and still finds time to supply me with tomato plants, Mexican sunflowers and multiple species of unwanted cacti. Charles Ives, now regarded as the leading American modernist composer of the 20th century, was head of a successful insurance firm and composed in his spare time. And how did Winston Churchill manage to fit in the writing of 43 books, as well as over 550 paintings, alongside his military and political career? TV gardener Alan Titchmarsh, another restless over-achiever, has added poet, bell-ringer, novelist, children’s author and interviewer to his portfolio of professions. He...
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