I attempted to keep these ever expanding seedlings, plugs and small plants going through that first unsettling lockdown in spring/summer 2020. During this time we were still living in London with a polytunnel taking up most of the garden, later banished to the allotment as the paddling pool took preference (quite right too). 

We’d decided to move out of London before the pandemic hit and found our new home just before lockdown. While the sale and purchase went through the plants largely failed. High winds destroyed the polytunnels, homeschooling and uncertainty zapped my enthusiasm and my Dad’s worsening illness all added up to a pretty difficult time to say the least.

Everything culminated in late July. After 20 years in London we moved into our dream house in the country on the Tuesday and said goodbye to my Dad on the Friday. Possibly the strangest and hardest week I’ve known.

With the show back on for June 2021, I was off and running again, albeit in that strange autopilot that grief creates. Once again the polytunnel failed me. High winds one night lifted the whole thing and we found it the next day, over the out-building, down the bank and in a ditch. Not one to give up, and with a very supportive family, it was time to move everything indoors!