A recent post solicited a comment from an old and good friend.

He suggested that my recent posts exhibited less rant and more comment and observation, or should that be observation and comment.

Anyway, perhaps he has a point.

Blogging seems to be acting upon me as a form of therapy. When I started I had thought that it may act as a kind of waste disposal unit, in which to empty all my frustration at the madness of the world.

This I figured, would make me a more relaxed and easy going individual. This would definitely be a good thing.

In reality however, the effect seems to have been even more profound than anticipated.

If even my blog posts are rant free, perhaps we have stumbled upon a treatment for a condition that seems to affect a large proportion of the over 40s.

Yes, I know it’s harder to imagine than a world without possessions or religion but …

A world without Clarkson, devoid of mindless ranting, everyone really having a nice day, oh my god it’s horrible.

Creeping Americanisation, so much positivity, huge helpings of going forward and not a trace of irony. It’s unbearably intolerably horrible.

Perhaps, after all, true perfection really does have to be imperfect.

How long is this depressing weather going to last?

It feels to me like we entered a tunnel back in November and four months later still can’t see the light. It’s worse than Eurotunnel! Well, perhaps not quite that extreme but still uncomfortable and  inconvenient and  irritating and I have had enough.

I need to see the sun and feel its warmth on my back. I need to get out in the garden to tidy up the beds and borders, not to mention repair the damage done to the lawn by Mr Mole.

In desperation I am close to contemplating a cheap flight to somewhere reasonably close to somewhere hot! Although with second thoughts that still won’t help me catch up on the gardening.

Perhaps after all these years it will be the weather that drives me into the clutches of religion. Pray God deliver me from cold, wet, gloominess.

I am off to look up Paganism on the world wide winter web.

In my ideal dream world every idea that pops into my head would be vetted by me, and if deemed worthy, would immediately and magically materialise.

No budget, application forms, health and safety, selection panels, judges, drawings, planning, contractors or  site meetings.

Nothing but pure imagination and realisation without all the messy bits in between.

But, and there always is a but, the real world has just barged back into my daydreams in the form of a letter from the RHS, informing me that my design for the  Hampton Court conceptual category has not been successful.

Rejection is never pleasant but bearing in mind I have had a pretty good run of luck of late, it’s not too hard to be philosophical, especially as I have gardens at  Chelsea and Tatton Park to keep me busy.

Some you win and some you don’t.

C’est la vie.

Do I look bothered!

More about Tatton Park, the universe and everything very soon.

Great news, the RHS have accepted our design for the Tatton Park Flower Show. I say ‘our’ because it’s a three way collaboration with  sculptor, John Humphreys, and nurseryman, Derek Smith.

The garden will be  called A Matter Of Time and will be exhibited in the Visionary Gardens category, although even I think it’s pushing the definition of  a garden to well beyond breaking point.

It’s all about the enormity of space and time and the possibility, or otherwise, of us encountering alien life forms. I suppose it’s also about perspective, or at least the absence of a human sense of perspective.

Oh dear, here I go again, perhaps it’s better if  I stop now and have a nice soothing cup of tea.

The Urban Plantaholics Kitchen Garden continues to progress. The stud work frame is now finished, allowing us to get a feel for the sheltered, secluded atmosphere we want to create at Chelsea.

It may seem a contradiction in terms to try to create a secluded private garden at a show visited by 157,000 people but I think this is one of the main issues facing designers of show gardens. The public have to be able to see the garden, but if you can see the whole thing in one glance, it’s not likely to be very interesting.

In a real garden we can partition, divide, interrupt, obscure and frame to our heart’s content, safe in the knowledge that each area, vista and feature will in good time reveal itself to the viewer as they explore.

A show garden has to work when viewed from the outside by the public, as well as from inside when inspected by the judges. It’s a fine line!

I was particularly impressed by Andy Sturgeon’s garden at Chelsea in 2008. He used a surprisingly dense planting of Dicksonia and Nothofagus around the perimeter, causing the viewer to glimpse the delights within through fronds and branches. It was almost magical!

I find myself at times obsessed with this relationship between what we can and can’t see, both in the garden and in life.

We always seem to want to see and know more but as soon as something comes fully into view, it loses much of its appeal. It’s a very human dilemma. What’s better, anticipation or gratification?

I hope to be exploring this theme some more at Hampton Court in the summer, if my application is accepted. My two conceptual gardens in 2007 and 8 were both concerned with this dilemma and played with the viewer’s perceptions. My submission for this year continues to push in the same direction, playing with what you can and can’t see and even what you can and can’t destroy. Fingers crossed!!!

Global warming is happening and it’s my fault. That’s the political and scientific consensus at present.

I say my fault because I drive to work, heat my house and wash using hot water, all of which give me a larger carbon footprint than the average penguin. Not, it should be noted, larger than a South American cow, although that’s another story.

OK, so everyone says I must trade in my diesel van for a milk float and turn the central heating down, fit solar panels and erect a windmill.

I wonder whether all this potential eco-action would do more for my conscience than the future of the planet?

Anyway, I heard something very strange on the radio the other day: Mr Neil McGregor of the British Museum presenting a history of the world in one hundred objects. Fascinating listening and thinking – well done BBC.

The object in question was a pestle, said to be around 10,000 years old, and evidence that at that time we moved from hunter gathering to a more settled farming life style.

Mr McGregor then stated that at this point in history the climate warmed by around 7 degrees in one hundred years and sea levels rose by 5 meters. Britain became an island and America was lost for thousands of years. Given that I only started driving in 1986 we need another culprit.

The following seems to me a  perfectly plausible theory.

When the earth started to warm, penguins and polar bears from all over the globe converged on a rapidly melting ice sheet now known as Copenhagen.

I feel sure they must have decided, as we have, that global warming is caused by too much gas and to remedy this, they passed a law stating that emissions must be drastically reduced.

They did not, however, allow for the law of unintended consequences. Three weeks later, hundreds of thousands of penguins and polar bears exploded, releasing an enormous volume of gas into the atmosphere and tipping global warming into overdrive.

Very few penguins and polar bears survived, those that did blamed each other for the catastrophe, and after much fighting divided the last remaining habitable areas between them.