Sing a Song of Sixpence..

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Sing a song of sixpence a pocket full of rye,
Four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie…

You might be forgiven for thinking that owning a garden nursery is an oasis of calm and tranquillity. Listening to the birds singing as you gently potter around tending to your plants. The reality is that raising plants to sell is a constant struggle against the elements and nature. Some days it feels as though everything that crawls just wants to chew away at your seedlings.

A few years ago just before the biggest plant show of the season I gazed smugly upon rows of beautiful healthy plants. I knew that all of the months of hard work and cracked hands were worth it. Overnight we had a hail storm. I didn’t feel quite so smug the next day.

This week I was weeding the borders. The sun was warm on my back and I smiled at a blackbird with a beak full of greenery as it disappeared into the honeysuckle inches in front of me. Little did I know that the beak full of greenery consisted of several dozen of my rarest seedlings which it had been busy raiding out of the plant pots from the nursery.

Despite all of the trials and tribulations I still have the best job in the world.

• 30 Apr, 2010
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