having published spaghetti head in 2018, i have eventually published my second book, uncomplicated gardening, time-saving tips and tales from a professional gardener, about how you can have a lovely garden without it taking up all your spare time. i hope it helps you spend more time enjoying your garden and less time working in it.

Spaghetti Head

In 2006 I wanted to be out of the relationship I was in, but my head and heart were spinning and fighting one another everytime I tried to decide what action to take. One day I sat on my bedroom floor and tried to put my confused thoughts and emotions into a drawing. The image I drew showed a ball of tangled lines. I named each line with an emotion or thought - such as ‘mistrust’, ‘unknown’, ‘jealousy’ etc. Underneath that image I drew nice, orderly straight lines and wrote only positive words to reflect the emotions I wanted to attract to my life: ‘love’, ‘peace’, ‘trust’.

I stared at the page in front of me for a while and added one big arrow heading from the jumbled mess of lines to the nice orderly pile. I started to note down what I needed to do to move from the top mind-state to the bottom - and I thought, ‘hang on a minute - this could make a good story’. And thus the seed for Spaghetti Head was sewn.

I call it self-help fiction. Someone else said it’s certainly not your average self-help romantic comedy political speculative fiction!
What everyone who reads it agrees on though, is that it’s original, thought-provoking and has caused them to look at cornflakes in a totally different light.  

uncomplicated gardening - time-saving tips and tales from a professional gardener

On November 23rd 2005 I packed some bits, including Fred my 1978 Falcon racing bike, into my Peugeot 106 and drove from Somerset to France. I had booked accommodation for five months.

Twenty years and many ‘pourquoi pas’ later, I’m still here and have my own gardening business. I work in huge gardens, small gardens and everything in between and I’m always working to a time deadline based on how many hours people are able to employ me for. Because of these time constraints I have developed shortcuts and choose plants that do well with little effort, employ gardening techniques that save time.

I thought, if I can keep large gardens looking good in little time, then maybe I can persuade people who think gardening is time-consuming and hard work to change their minds? Uncomplicated Gardening is my attempt to share ways that reluctant gardeners or busy people can have a garden they can enjoy without having to spend every weekend weeding, pruning or tidying.