Gardening: the secret of happiness

What could be more delightful than kneeling in the mud, pulling out weeds, with the soft spring sunshine on your back? Novelist Julie Myerson explains the intense joy that gardening has brought her, while other keen amateurs share their passion

I opened my eyes to gardening when I turned 39. More than a decade earlier we had moved into a terraced house with a lush, mature garden. I imagined that, like wallpaper, it would stay that way with little care or effort from me. It didn't ? it grew wild and sad. Things died, weeds took over. Even then, with my frantic urban life and my tired urban heart, I barely noticed. I remember sitting with my babies on the brown lawn one summer's evening and asking my husband (who loathes gardening, but at least recognised a duty of care) if he really had to make so much noise with that watering can.

The change, when it came, was sudden and immense. Was it simply middle age? All I know is that one day I wasn't seeing, and the next day, it was all there. The magnolia with its huge creamy blossoms like birds in flight. The Michaelmas daisies, choked by convolvulus. The poor roses, leggy and parched and crying out for help. I got down on my hands and knees and scratched around in the soil, wondering what was weed and what was seedling ? and realised that I knew nothing.

So I got myself a book. It happened to be Urban Jungle by Monty Don. Don is as gifted a writer as he is a gardener, and he took me straight back to the person I'd forgotten I once was: a kid who used to dig around at the bottom of the garden in her anorak. A girl who noticed the seasons, the calling of birds, the smell of sap on the air. Finding that person again has been one of the most intense and comforting experiences of the last few years.

The garden I tend now ? once you're a proper gardener, it never feels like "ownership", more a joyful custodianship ? is a unique and colourful space. We live next to an early Victorian church along from London's Elephant and Castle, and the patch of earth we call ours was once the graveyard. They assured us the bodies were all exhumed at the end of the 19th century, when the philanthropic rector created a "zoo" garden, complete with zebras and monkeys, to entertain the local children. The animals are long gone, but I'm not sure my garden's entirely empty of dead people. Our border collie was known to unearth an occasional femur-shaped bone. And 5in coffin nails regularly work their way to the surface of the (suspiciously fertile) soil.

People sometimes ask me if it feels creepy, gardening among the dead like that, but to me it's a benign and peaceful space. The church spire looms on one side as the estate's windows glitter on the other, and with the many trees ? and yes, maybe all those souls under the earth ? there's a stillness that can make you forget you're in the heart of the city.

I'm still not a very good gardener. I make it up, learning as I go along. I killed a camellia. I've had to apologise to plants that I've planted in the wrong place. And I've completely failed to grow garlic, radishes and onions. But I can do tomatoes, French beans, rocket, sorrel and (now) potatoes. Also, lupins, delphiniums, poppies and sweet peas.

But, given our position in the heart of the community, I've had to come to terms with some stranger crops, too. The ubiquitous bright blue plastic bags which are perpetually blown in on the wind. Crisp packets, fried chicken boxes, single discarded shoes. I used to mind, but I don't any more ? I just pluck them along with the weeds. The other day, I found a stolen handbag under the ceanothus and was able to return it to its elderly owner. One hot Sunday morning last summer, I went to hang out the washing and found a loaded handgun nestling among the daisies.

Gardening has shaken me up and slowed me down. It's the only activity I can still do when I'm worried or angry or sad. Tending a garden is a meditative, humbling experience: you can't force anything, you just have to wait. And yet every time you put something in the ground, it feels like a pronouncement of faith in the future ? or at least in the next few months.

Apart from bleakest December, when the garden's breath seems stopped, I garden in all weathers. I garden till my whole body hurts, until I know I should stop but I can't. Nothing makes me happier than kneeling down in the dirt with the soft spring sunshine on my back and weeding a bed by hand, watched over by my tabby cat and a friendly robin (she has promised not to eat him) and knowing that all around me, things are growing.

Favourite flower: Probably Verbena bonariensis ? I love flowers that seem to float. But nothing beats picking your own sweet peas on a hot summer's morning.

Most successful crop: Potatoes. So easy, yet so solid, sustaining and somehow impressive.

Worst disaster: My first crop of runner beans yielded precisely nothing.

Julie Myerson's new novel Then is published by Cape in June.

Diana Athill, writer

TEverything here in Highgate is buzzing with life: the magnolia by my window is out, the blackbirds are singing, the sweet peas I've sewn in a pot on my balcony are coming up. I've got morning glories growing from seed from the ones I grew last year ? and three boxes of brave little violas, which look delicate, but survived frost and snow. I shall have to be tough and replace them soon with more summery things, but it will be sad to see them go. I do cheat with balcony boxes and put in grown plants for quick results, but the real joy of gardening, of course, is sewing and planting and watching things develop.

This kind retirement home where I live lets us dabble about in its big garden, and last autumn I smuggled in a patch of lovely little blue wood anemones, which are just beginning to flower. I also contributed some big oriental poppies that promise to make a glorious show. One of my fellow residents, a good gardener who has made a far bigger contribution, lets me help keep our roof garden in good nick. Yesterday I was helping her prepare pots for seedlings, which was very pleasant. Why, one might ask, does filling little pots feel like fun? I suppose it wouldn't if you didn't happen to be mad about plants. If you are, there is enormous satisfaction in choosing them and doing whatever is necessary to help them grow and stay beautiful. It connects you with what is outside yourself like few other activities, and that is the secret of happiness. I consider myself tremendously lucky in being allowed to enjoy this simple pleasure now that I am so much older than I ever thought I'd be.

Favourite flower: It's absurd to think of one favourite. As soon as I think of tulips I think of lilies, and as soon as I think lilies I think, well, why not roses!

Most successful crop: I've never grown vegetables. I'm mad about flowers.

Worst disaster: In my Norfolk garden, one corner turned lethal ? whatever I planted there died. I got a soil specialist to come in but they couldn't work it out, so I gave up in despair and grassed it over!

John Humphrys, broadcaster

TWhen I worked as a foreign correspondent, it was always a prerequisite, no matter where I was in the world, that I lived somewhere with a garden. Gardening has been a passion of mine since my teenage years, when I worked on an allotment growing fruit and vegetables, but the passion is probably even stronger now.

I've spent the past 11 years rejuvenating my garden in London. When we first moved in it was hugely overgrown. I spent hours hacking away at rotten vine that had attached itself to one of the beautiful old Victorian walls. Now I grow a huge variety of shrubs and have just grown my first magnolia tree, which has recently sprung into bloom, and looks rather marvellous. I'm nervous about the time, which will come soon, I suppose, when everything is grown and there's not much left to do.

Although I'm reluctant to make it sound even vaguely mystical, there really is a sort of connection you feel with the soil and with growing things. The idea that you put this scrappy little seed into the ground and watch it grow and develop is immensely satisfying. It's primal, isn't it?

Favourite flower: My campanula are very satisfactory right now.

Best crop: My asparagus bed in an upstate New York garden. Cooked within about 30 seconds of being picked, asparagus is among the finest meals you'll ever have.

Worst disaster: The bloody squirrels! I've tried everything to get rid of them; sprinkling chilli on the bird feeder, stacks of tennis balls, old shoes, I've even toyed with the idea of an air gun, but most of the time I just stand by the patio doors with a very large stick and charge at them.

Ken Livingstone, mayoral candidate

It's all the tedious things about gardening ? sifting the compost and pruning the hedges ? that I enjoy the most. I do all my thinking when I'm gardening, as it's about the only time I get alone. When I was mayor, my wife would often overhear me arguing with myself over various policy ideas in the garden.

I'm lucky that I've got a south-facing garden as it allows me to get out there as early as January and start potting, but I suppose the most active I've been in my garden was when Neil Kinnock was Labour leader and I had no role in the party, so had a lot of spare time.

I'm pleased with my large pond and my variety of berries. I grow about half a dozen types, from tayberries to Japanese wineberries. My mulberry tree is a bit of a prize asset. I got the clippings for it from the Chelsea Physic Garden, where they chopped down the last remaining King James mulberry from the original mulberry orchard at the start of the second world war.

When I started on this garden 21 years ago, I was obsessed with straight lines and paths, but as the years have passed I've relaxed. I suppose you could say that there's a little bit of myself in that ? the uptight little English boy who's emerged into an anarchist.

Favourite plant: My two redwood trees ? one sequoia, one coastal ? planted when they were just inches tall. The sequoia lives for 3,000 years and grows to hundreds of feet tall. Perhaps it'll be there in 3,000 years, providing global warming doesn't kill it off.

Best crop: Every few years I dig up the lawn and do a potato crop for a year. Last year was a fantastic yield. It kept us going throughout all of summer and most of autumn.

Worst disaster: Putting down paths with a concrete base is never a good idea ? when I decided to get rid of them 15 years later, hacking them up was an absolute nightmare.

John Harris, writer

TThe horticulture bug was hereditary with me, but I developed the symptoms late. Both my parents ? and younger brother ? are energetic and ambitious gardeners, but throughout my teens and 20s, their passion mostly bemused me. Too much commitment was required; the stock of knowledge you needed seemed impossible to acquire. Half-listening to Gardeners' Question Time every Sunday only increased the sense of a confusingly alien world. Tomato trusses? The correct height of bean-poles? It took me until I was 16 to figure out that peas came in pods (no joke).

But in my 30s, something stirred. I was finally becoming a fully functioning adult, and aiming to make the garden more than a tangle of weeds and some outdoor furniture felt increasingly obligatory. There was a faintly Freudian thing going on, I think: an underlying drive to emulate Dad, and thereby elicit his approval. So, one spring Sunday, I nervously drove to a garden centre, took the advice of a helpful member of staff, bought a couple of Alan Titchmarsh books, and began. Within six weeks, my bedding plants were in glorious bloom, we were eating home-grown radishes and lettuce, and my courgettes looked great. The next year, with help from Ma and Pa, I just about mastered the fiddly rituals of tomato cultivation. Really: what had kept me?

Favourite flower: White climbing iceberg roses.

Best crop: Courgettes. Heavy rain can ruin them, but the taste of home-grown leaves supermarket varieties standing.

Worst disaster: Spinach. It's a soil thing, apparently.

Rageh Omaar, foreign correspondent

TNurturing and watching things grow is a marked contrast to what my job involves, which is often travelling to places where things have been destroyed and people have been killed. It's the creativity of it I enjoy, the life-giving part of it. My garden is a refuge. It is about being at home and having time to process things after long stints away.

My garden is much like me, eclectic and ramshackle, going through patches of being neat and tidy, then falling back again. I plant a range of things, from roses, to lovely hydrangea, some herbs, some peonies. It's a real cottage garden.

I had a pair of boots that spent years accompanying me across the world on stories to Afghanistan, Congo, Darfur, Iraq, but my wife told me they were too shabby to wear any more. Instead of throwing them out, I planted daffodils in them and they sit in the garden now.

I grew up in Africa, where we had a tropical garden, but it's the seasons of Britain that I love. Seeing the garden come back to life in spring is a real joy.

Favourite flower: Peonies ? so lush.

Best crop: I'm hoping we've managed to save a cherry tree that was diseased when we moved into the house.

Worst disaster: A small lemon tree I was given for Christmas, which kept dying.

Additional interviews by Oliver Laughland

Julie Myerson

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