Celebrity

My favourite thorn belongs to the rose with a name like a mouthful of broken teeth, Rosa sericea pteracantha. It is grown almost entirely for its astonishing ruby-red shark's fin thorns that are at their lapidary best in early summer, especially when backlit by a low setting sun.

Ground elder, introduced by the Romans as a vegetable, is difficult to get rid of because it regrows from the smallest trace of root.

I often eat cakes while my fingers are caked in soil.

I always see gardening as escape, as peace really. If you are angry or troubled, nothing provides the same solace as nurturing the soil.

The horticultural industry is unimaginative and dominated by vast, supermarket-like outlets. But the small nurseries and growers remain - praise them with your wallets, not your memories.

Daffodils, blossom and tulips jostle to the front of the stage in April. I love these early perennials: they may be more modest but they nearly all have that one special quality that a plant needs to transform your affections from admiration to affection - charm.

A weekly column is not always a treat. It can be a tyranny. There are times when I have very little to say. There are times, every year, when I am weighed down with depression. At these times it takes days of slog to force the words on to the page.

I love filming. I love the teamwork. It's a tight-knit group spending months on the road together. All the experience is shared.

I live in the middle of country so I walk a lot.

Plant breeding has been going on for millennia and it's a gradual process.

When you're 15 whatever your parents tell you you should do, you're not going to do it.

Intellectually the French are wonderfully open, in a way the British just don't begin to be. You can question ideas in France, endlessly. In Britain, two things happen when you do that. Either you're branded an intellectual, which is fundamentally mistrusted, or you're branded a phony and pretentious, which people despise.

Tony Blair is a dreadful man; really truly dreadful.

If I'm honest, the thing I am proudest of is my varieties of wild flowers in the hay meadow.

I was brought up a strict Christian. My father was a lay preacher, my mother a church warden. The rhythm and ritual of the Anglican Church was part of our lives.

I live in the middle of country so I walk a lot.

We don't value food in Britain, so therefore the cheaper it is the better it is. We all eat far too much, we all pay far too little for our food. We have environmental problems, we have health problems, we have food transport problems.

As September rolls into October, I become obsessed with apples. Now obviously this is provoked by the ripening fruit clustering on the trees in our orchard, but it is as though all things pomological ripen in me, too.

We know that gardening is good for you. It is fantastic, all-round exercise. That is easy to see and evaluate. It inculcates high levels of well-being. That is undeniable and needs little measurement.

Tony Blair is a dreadful man; really truly dreadful.