So I said last week to Emma, looking at our garden, 'You know, I believe I'm actually finally quite a good gardener.' She looked aghast at me. She knows I live and breed plants. She knows I read everything I can find on plants, that I have a gargantuan database that started out as a little notebook wish-list of plants more than twenty-five years ago and which now has 12000 entries. She looks about at what I've created here in what is really a very modest suburban garden and she thinks I'm being laughably self-effacing. But I'm not. It's taken this long to get me to the stage where I can look about and think 'I actually feel like I know what I'm doing.' I can't tell you how satisfying that is. I've moved on average once a year since I left home including a year in Australia and several moves to university towns to study ecology. Gardens need a permanent home. It's not a good combination. So I've been through my Gargantuan Plant List and the RHS Plantfinder and noted all the things that I think are worth growing that don't seem to be available locally, or at all in the UK, and I'm going about the business of getting hold of the seeds and stock plants and setting up my very own nursery.