Anna Pavord on her passion for plants, at 5x15

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Anna Pavord on her passion for plants, at 5x15

04 May 2011

Speakers: Anna Pavord

Anna Pavord looks back at her life through the habitations and gardens that have defined it. From her childhood antipathy towards gardening, “I grew up hating gardens, my heart was in the town with its hissing Italian coffee machines”, to her eventual obsession with it. Her journey takes us from the Welsh borders down to London and her “momentous” barge boat, as she recreates a long gone era of health, visitors unfazed by her “crawling on hands and knees up the gang plank, with my first baby strapped to my stomach”.

It was here that she discovered her appetite for gardening, though when she realised her efforts would always come undone by the meddlesome Thames tide, a return to ‘country proper’ beckoned. Pavord evokes with great passion what it means to build a relationship with where you live, she tells us of how their Queen Anne Rectory “ruled our lives, held us, protected us, horrified us, involved us”. From the disasters to the great triumphs, her story is one of tremendous patience and perseverance as she describes the demands involved in creating these wonderful and unique environments.