Barney Bardsley talks exclusively to TopVeg about her new paperback “A Handful of Earth: a year of healing and growing”.

Intrigued by the book, we were keen to explore Barney Bardsley’s relationship with vegetable gardening, and are most grateful to Barney for agreeing to participate in the following e-interview:

• TopVeg: You seem to be a natural gardener! Do you believe that you possess inherent gardening knowledge, or did you pick up everything you know from reading magazines and working on your allotment?

Barney: I garden entirely intuitively. I just get out there and dig like crazy, making shapes and sculptures from the plants - pruning where I feel like it - feeling my way through. It seems to work. When I started, I read all the gardening magazines, and I still like “Kitchen Garden” very much, but mainly I just “go with the flow”. Other gardeners on the allotment give me tips and clues. We all share advice. It’s easy enough, if you don’t take it too seriously.

• TopVeg: Do you consider that there is something important about the association of plants with people?

Barney: There is a connection between humans and animals, and between humans and the planet we inhabit. Plants have wonderful healing qualities, a vitality and a quietness, which people really benefit from. Humanity is happiest, in a garden.

• TopVeg: In your book you say that you like October. Do you have no dread of the long winter ahead?

Barney: I do still like October. I quite like the closing in of the seasons in autumn. It’s time to hibernate….October is exquisitely beautiful, with the colour changes on the trees and the gentle fall of the leaves. I am not a fan of winter, but I don’t dread it. It’s just a natural turn of the world towards sleep.

• TopVeg: Your book tells us that you teach T’ai Chi. Do you ever practice T’ai Chi outside? Does T’ai Chi have any relation to the garden?

Barney: I do practise T’ai Chi outside, when the weather is good enough. T’ai chi is based on Taoism, the ancient chinese philosopy of “being at one with nature”. The movements are based on the flow of water, and the lightness of the air, as well as imitating the movement of birds and animals. T’ai Chi - which means “peaceful energy” - is entirely related to nature, and therefore, to the garden.

• TopVeg: There is little mention of children’s gardening in the book. Do you consider gardening a family activity, or more of a solitary occupation?

Barney: It depends on the family! In my family it is a solitary occupation because my daughter has no interest, at 15, with digging! But when she was 5, she liked worms - and played outside while I gardened. So…gardening is flexible. It can be shared. It can be solitary. I do enjoy the solitude it gives me, I must say.

• TopVeg: You attended Hull University and Hull has always had a particularly good Parks Department. Did you have any horticultural experience during your years in Hull?

Barney: I was a student in Hull! Students are better known, generally, for their partying, than for their gardening…. I didn’t garden in my twenties. I partied.

• TopVeg: Is there a vegetable you have ambitions to grow?

Barney: May be asparagus, which I adore, but which is fiendishly difficult to establish. I am not sure I have the stamina or know-how to do the groundwork for it.

• TopVeg: What percentage of the vegetables you eat, do you grow?

Barney: In the summer, most of the salad greens are my own. But otherwise, it’s a small percentage. I do well with potatoes and onions, but I am a gardener, not a farmer, so productivity is not high on my list. I like my allotment to look beautiful, as well as producing food.

The paperback “A Handful of Earth: a year of healing and growing” by Barney Bardsley (published by John Murray, £7.99) was published on January 24th 2008.

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