I almost missed Dan Pearson’s garden.
I ran into an old buddy in the Grand Pavillion at Chelsea, and he asked me what my favourite garden was, then
Ed: ‘What did you think of Dan Pearson’s garden?’.
Me: ‘What? Dan’s here? I didn’t even know he had a garden here!’
Ed: ‘It blows everything else out of the water’.
Some plants just make you ache. There’s thousands of plants I like, hundreds that I love, and just a few that can make my heart skip a beat – plants that hold my attention for ages, and then having me longing to look again, and for longer, the moment I look away.
I’ve never had any problem remembering the name of this fabulous sedum. I can’t, even if I wanted to, shake the lingering images of Steve Martin playing Prince Ruprecht in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels – the idiot child who, agitated and clearly hanging on at the dinner table, puts his hand up and asks if he can go to the toilet. When given permission, he stays sitting where he is, slowly and visibly relaxes and releases in his chair, politely says ‘thank you’, then continues to eat.
