The Chelsea Physic garden was founded by  the Society of Apothecaries in 1673. The garden is south facing and walled and has its own microclimate.

It is a haven: warm, tranquil, unhurried, unlike so much of London (and don’t get me wrong I do love London). If you get the chance go there on a sunny blue-sky afternoon, as I did: take the guided tour, sit outside at the cafe tables, watch an elegant wedding, breathe in the garden’s flowers and fruits, its trees and glasshouses, feel its healing properties … Some days are diamond… as Tom Petty sings – and I’m fond of quoting I know –  but it’s especially true on afternoons like these, in places such as this.

I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.  ~e.e. cummings

My novel The Orchid House is set in a great Cornish garden: Trescombe. Each chapter begins with an extract from the journal of Henry Dodson, Trescombe’s Head Gardener in the late nineteenth century.

Chapter 4

Madeline Quintrel

 The wild cherries are in blossom and the last of the parsnips have been dug. The pea sticks are cut and the sweet pea trench dug where the autumn rye grass grew. In my estimation it is best always to use rested ground for the cultivation of sweet peas…

 A new gardener’s boy, Matthew Palmer, 14 years, is employed. He is to share rooms with John Court… the garden staff now number nineteen…

The arrival today of a dozen tree ferns from Treseder’s has caused much interest… and even his Lordship came from his orchids to watch the unwrapping of the dusty stumps…H.D.

 Roma woke at five. Unable to get back to sleep, she slipped out of bed, pulled on her clothes from the day before and left Will to wake at six thirty with the alarm. It was dark still by the time she reached the lawns of the Long Garden that stretched in front of Trescombe House. As she crossed them on her way to the far wood she was stopped dead by the sudden appearance of a light in one of the windows and silhouetted against it, like a ghost hanging on the terrace, the figure of a woman…