Garden Talk

At home, we are pickaxing up areas of the garden.  Grappling with unwanted curbstones, squinting at the winter ghosts of ground elder and hacking through shrubs to go.  As an antidote, I have been having a go at my alphabet summary of the year.  It is a verbal amuse bouche of the things I saw and the people I met over the past 12 months.. well there is no point stretching it out forever so back to K which is for for Eddie Krutysza. Eddie is a nurseryman and rose specialist.  He grows rare roses and selects them on a scale of 1 to 10 for scent.  He is quite right, of course, what is the point of a rose that doesn’t smell? I spent a week in July at his Hattens Farm Nurseries in north Suffolk learning how to bud roses.  See:   http://www.catharinehoward.co.uk/2014/07 /28/how-to-bud-a-rose/ On my last day there Eddie and his wife took me on a walk round their village of Metfield.  Almost all the roses there are his progeny. Eddie has a feeling for roses like a conductor presiding over an orchestra.  Visit him at hattensfarmnurseriesmetfield.co.uk