It’s not often I feel personally slighted by something on the radio, but, like super blogger Veg Plotting, I was a bit stung by last week’s comments by gardening expert Pippa Greenwood about know-nothing gardening bloggers. (In answer to a question about bloggers identifying pests and diseases, Pippa said, “I’m always very wary of information on blogging websites, because half of it’s bunkum, and it’s quite obvious that people don’t know what they’re identifying.”)

As VP has already so ably argued, expert gardeners like the Gardener’s Question Time Panel and other celebrity gardeners have been known to give misguided advice or undertake drastically wrong gardening practices. So even if bad guidance were rife among gardening blogs, they would by no means be the only guilty parties.

But my own experience is that gardening blogs don’t give bad advice. Most I writers I read — from gardening journalists like Lia and Jane to well-spoken enthusiasts like Jean and Lisa – publish blogs that are journals of what works and what doesn’t in their own gardens, which helps me avoid mistakes. Even more helpfully, the best gardening blogs are chronicles about the gardener’s relationship with his or her outside space. Although many writers start their blog believing they’ll be giving out advice, many find their posts end up being more searching, more philosophical, and that’s what I love about the blogs I follow.

When advice is doled out, I’m comforted to see it’s usually based on first-hand experience. The comment stream that follows blog posts entails fruitful chats among readers, and authors are happy to stand corrected if a reader points out an error, an omission, or indeed a misidentification of a pest or disease. It’s this conversation which makes blogs live and breathe, and which has made me get over my initial journalist’s suspicion of the medium.

As a journalist myself, I was a blog denier for many years, seeing blogs as nothing better than a mob’s mouthpiece, accuracy optional. In journalism school we revered facts and were trained to question everything we heard (“If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out,” my professor told me). When blogs rolled around, it pained me to see unsubstantiated rumour and opinion being elevated to the same level as proper journalism. I’ve gotten over it. Blog dross falls to the bottom, quality rises, and the chance blogs offer to discuss and interact is worth the occasional mistake.

I wonder if the comments by Pippa Greenwood — who, I must say, is my favorite GQT panelist, with tremendous knowledge and a great skill for drawing pictures on radio — were motivated by a similar, deeply held suspicion of the blogosphere.

So can you trust the advice you read on gardening blogs? Always consider your own climate, soil type and other environmental factors (exposed? shady?) before applying the advice you hear online — that’s just sensible, and most avid gardeners would do this instinctively. The real threat I see to anyone seeking advice online — on anything from horticulture to medical conditions, child development to business marketing — isn’t blogs per se, but rather the nonsense topical content which only exists in order to provide search engine visibility for a website.

I know you’ve come across this kind of thing, stuffed with keywords designed to make Google sit up and take notice. “The thing about gardening with roses is that roses, when they’re in your garden, bring the scent of roses into your garden all summer long. There’s no doubt that, if you grow roses in your garden, bringing them into a house is also a great way to bring the scent of the garden into your home with roses.”

When looking for your answers, use common sense, get a second opinion if you’re very worried, or consult expert panels like GQT or or the immensely helpful Facebook pages connected to other radio shows, like BBC Radio Leeds Gardening with Tim and Joe or KUOW Seattle’s Greendays gardening panel. These guys know what they’re talking about, and you might even get your question read on air.

Do you have a place in your garden, or your allotment, that feels most like your sanctuary? One of the smallest corners in my small garden is shaping up to be sanctuary for me. Yes, I can hear the teenagers at the market cross just beyond my wall doing their Saturday night shrieking from time to time. But on my side of the wall — an ancient structure maybe 10 feet high, so reassuringly solid — a tiny seating area and a few plants tolerant of the basement garden-like conditions help make this a place of private perfection, or as near as makes no difference.

When I began the garden seven years ago, I remember I tried to fashion this as my Boston corner. I put in Virginia creeper for the flaming autumn colour of the New England sugar maples, and potted rhododendrons to remind me of those whose leaves were my temperature gauge each winter when I was growing up: as you probably know, rhodo leaves conveniently curl into cigars when temperatures hit freezing.

I bet it’s that nod to childhood, plus the protected-but-not-claustrophobic feeling of the high wall on one side, that gives this space a certain atmosphere that makes me want to come here when I have a moment. It’s also right outside my office window, and as my inexpert design tweaks over the last few years have nudged this area closer to what I want, it’s become the ideal place to rest my eyes as I try to think of the right verb for something I’m writing.

Shall I tell you what’s planted here now? Well, to start, the area is no more than 9′ x 7′ and faces south, but it only gets direct sun from around 12 to 2:30pm in summer.

• Red rose for contrast: The south facing wall is made mostly of the two French doors leading out from my office; the deeply fragrant climbing red rose from David Austin, Falstaff, is to the left of these doors on a scrolled metal trellis.



• Vine for autumn colour: The west facing wall is the tall stone one and hosts the Virginia creeper, which is making its way around the south wall to the top of the trellis.
• Rose for shade tolerance: The north facing wall is only chest high — it has cream colored harling (aka pebble dash), and it’s the retaining wall for the raised border that runs along one side of the house. That’s where I’ve trained the magnificent Old Glory rose, Gloire de Dijon, against a pretty pair of scrolled metal structures: not trellises, but narrow, window-shaped things designed to be wall planters. I know this rose’s magnificence only by reputation; it hasn’t flowered for me yet, but this year it’s looking promising. Why is it so much more rewarding to nurse something ailing and see it come back strongly? This rose is shade-tolerant but has struggled since I planted it; I cut back its weak growth in May and the regrowth has been vigorous.
• Rhododendron for nostalgia: The east facing wall is three full-length windows which look into the house. By these windows the entrance to a gravel path, 4 feet wide, leads out of this cosy corner to run between the raised border on one side and the house on in the other. Tucked at the side of this entrance to the gravel path is a potted “Purple Splendor” rhododendron, which shares its tub with a pieris.

Late last night, despite the darkness, I couldn’t resist a sit and a think there for a half an hour, with a cup of coffee and a lantern. Because it was only yesterday evening, having moved the potted rhodo and thinned out some of the pieris’s growth to make it fit that entrance, that I felt I’d struck on the right combination of elements for this space. My mum and I had tea in this corner when she was visiting; I wish she could sit there with me now.

Have you heard Carol Klein (a UK television gardener and owner of Glebe Cottage Plants, if you don’t know her) speak of the flowers that remind her of her own late mother, an avid gardener in her own right who sadly suffered from depression? Carol speaks of how the simple harebell means more to her than almost any other plant, because of the connection it gives her to her mother. My mother lives 3,000 miles away; my father passed away 10 years ago. Is it memories of my home with them, and of the childhood that with every passing year becomes more rose-tinted, that has made this corner my sanctuary?

Do you have a place or ritual that’s most special in your garden?