Taken from Lynne’s weekly column ‘Green Scene’ for the Western Mail
28th March 2026
Birthday Books
One of the lovely things about a birthday is that my ‘to-read’ book pile reaches new heights. I had a couple of ‘cracking’ reads given to me this year.
My uncle always manages to winkle out something unusual and educational. Last year it was ‘Sex in the Garden’, not a Jilly Cooper novel, but a 1976 book about plant reproduction with hundreds of beautiful woodcut, steel engraving and line drawings. This year he sent ‘An Almost Impossible Thing, The radical lives of Britain’s pioneering women gardeners’.
While working as Head of Libraries and Exhibitions at the Royal Horticultural Society, Fiona Davison came across a cache of letters from a young gardener who was denied a scholarship by the RHS on the grounds that she was female. Intrigued by what happened to young Olive, Fiona began to research the wider story of early female professional gardeners and discovered a group of pioneers who battled derision and prejudice to change forever expectations of what women gardeners could do.
Today, gardens are seen as places of sanctuary and promoted as wellbeing spaces, and it’s fascinating to read the stark contrast to that idyll and a study shows that now female gardeners are just outnumbering men at 57%. Although interestingly, the same study showed that 35% of men reported being the primary gardeners in their homes, slightly ahead of the 33% of women who claimed the same. And I’m sure that most of the men claimed, “I cut the grass and do the veg, and leave the flowers to her.’
That was the way my Nan and Granddad gardened. And I always remember my granddad muttering miserably, “A gardener should never marry a florist.’ My nan only picked flowers for their own house – and maybe a few friends – but it was enough to make my granddad moan.
I also had ‘Hannah. The Complete Story’. Dubbed as ‘an unlikely celebrity’, Hannah Hauxwell was a solitary woman farmer living a life of hardship on a remote Pennine farm, without electricity or running water. She had been left to cope alone when her parents and uncle died, running the farm between 1961 and 1988. In 1972, Yorkshire TV aired several documentaries, sharing her incredibly humble lifestyle and attitude with viewers.
Today, as well as enjoying her books and DVDs, you can visit Hannah’s Meadow, near Barnard Castle, ‘named in honour of Hannah Hauxwell, the lone Teesdale farmer, whose daily battles against poverty and the elements captivated the nation from the moment she appeared on our television screens in 1972.’
June is the best time to see the ‘thriving meadow’ with 120 types of plants, such as wood cranesbill, rough hawkbit, lady’s mantle, ragged robin, and devil’s-bit scabious. The visitor’s centre located in Hannah’s old barn, will also lead you through her story.
By using traditional farming methods all those years ago Hannah was actually ahead of the ‘conservation curve’. She was just doing what she knew, and what she’d always done. Now, thankfully, her incredible legacy is preserved for other generations to enjoy.
I have loved reading about these strong women, and who ironically, given their circumstances, make no reference to ‘stress’, but have the attitude that ‘life simply grows on’.
Food For Thought
And my third treasured birthday book is Tim Spector’s ‘Food for Life’ cookbook. Not about strong women, I grant you, but fundamentally offering nutrition science and recipes, which will keep you strong and healthy enough to blaze a trail of your own.
Promoting better health based on gut microbiome research, which has shown the importance of a healthy gut for all round wellbeing – think ‘gut feeling’ and ‘misery guts’, the clues were there – it has an impressive list of reviews and the recipes are refreshingly simple and delicious. Unlike a lot of ‘healthy cookbooks’, I found the focus was on taste and flavours rather than just health, making it a bit more ‘health by stealth.’
And, making the most of nature’s store larder, I have already swapped out spinach for delicious young nettle leaves and added the garlicky and spicy young Jack in the Hedge leaves to salads.
I love the saying, ‘The food you eat can either be the safest and most powerful form of medicine or the slowest form of poison.” And the great proverb – possibly more relevant now than ever – ‘Don’t dig your grave with your own knife and fork.’
Spring Forward
The clocks go forward tonight (Saturday), or 1.00 am on Sunday to be precise. The easy way to remember which way they go is ‘spring forward’.
Whilst we lose an hour of sleep, will be confused all of Sunday and sunrise will be a little later for a short while, having an extra hour of daylight at the end of the day is just delicious at this time of year, and especially after such a grey winter.
And the clock on my ‘vintage’ truck will be correct again.
Of course my brother wondered, “Why can’t the clocks go forward on Friday at 4 pm?”
Hat’s All Folks
Yesterday was ‘Wear Wear A Hat Day’, a fundraising day in aid of Brain Tumour Research. I am a huge fan of a hat and love the quote, “If you want to get ahead, wear a hat” but the main reason for sharing the date a day late was to be able to use this lovely photo that I recently found, of myself with a very young Alex Jones, and Eleri Sion taken when we were fundraising years ago. Hats off to us all.
I have a hat for virtually every occasion and love them all. I went to a funeral last week and was the only person, in a very large crowd of mourners, who wore a hat.
As well as the ‘right hat’ obviously keeping you warm and dry in the winter, sun hats can block up to 97% of the sun’s UVB rays, so really should be part of your summer wardrobe.
As my much-loved straw hat that I wore on Weatherman Walking is slowly disintegrating, I had to find a successor and was really disappointed not to be able to get the exact same ‘make and model’. I bought what I thought would be a good replacement to find the brim was far too floppy for my liking. So I spent a couple of hours last weekend, threading florists wire through the rim to be able to mould and shape it. And now I have a lovely bespoke ‘natty hat’.
Hat was noted and appreciated xx