2020 vision

I have learned a lot from this strange year. It has rekindled my awareness of how important our gardens are to our wellbeing, physical and mental, and to our wildlife

When I look back over the past year, the lens is clouded by Covid-19, which has obviously dominated all else. But if there had been no pandemic, this would still have been a remarkable and unusual year. It began here at Longmeadow, as the old year ended, with floods. These lasted till the beginning of March and were bigger and more sustained than anything in living memory and clearly one of the manifestations of climate change.

For all the horrors and crises of Covid-19 and political upheaval around the world, climate change remains a bigger story than everything else put together. It has oft been said, but is worth endlessly repeating, that gardeners are right at the cutting edge of climate change. All you need is a windowbox or a scrap of garden to notice