I have come to the decision I am not perhaps avant garde.

Looking up Webster, it says: “adjective – favouring or introducing new and experimental ideas and methods … ‘a controversial avant-garde composer'”

But I AM an Avant Gardener.

I so admire the English regimental style garden with every plant in its place, colour-matched. And then… I begin to work that way lining plants up, putting like with like.

This is indeed the garden of Fran, the Avant Gardener. Photos: Fran Cleland.

But to be truthful, I love cottage gardens where tomatoes grow alongside roses and daisies peep from under trees.

I try to stay neat. So then I go to the market and there is always a really nice plant that, if I was truthful, just doesn’t fit in anywhere…

But it’s lovely and I still buy it, take it home, and spend half an hour wandering “ lonely as a cloud” ( thanks Henry Wordsworth Longfellow) quietly round the garden, thinking… where will I put it? (and sometimes, I have to admit, why did I buy it?).

Plonking the pot down in a space and staring intently at it… then trying another space, while visualising whether if, when it is in flower, it will clash, or blend in.

Some plants have been known to spend a week or so getting moved here and there.

Husband used to protest when I decided that something that had been in one place for two years wasn’t right and got dug up and moved… After the weeping rose disagreement (I won), he’s given up. He knows from experience – protest is useless!

So today, I have come home with two really nice hellebores and an Aloe that I have always fancied… they both have places to go…. I think….

I spent considerable time at the market deciding if I needed more limonium and another Electric pink cordyline. They might have made it home had I not ran out of money…

AVANT GARDENER! That’s me!