WinterCat, Thanks for the poem! I've never run across that one before, and it's beautiful as well as botanical. I'm moderately interested in the history of rose hybridization, and plant discovery and development in general, but the lives of the people who happened to get roses named after them as a rule leave me cold. I've never cared for celebrity gossip. And, perhaps because of a minimalist element in my aesthetic composition, I don't collect plant-themed objects, or anything else, except for the plants themselves, and books. But my goal, or dream, is a very large, very complex garden filled with a tremendous variety of plants all in the place that's right for them. Much as I love both literature and gardening, I don't find a great deal of connection between them. Maybe it's like, oh, kittens: they're absolutely delightful in real life, but perhaps too charming to make good subjects for artistic interpretation. For years I've had a vague idea in the back of my mind of a garden poem, long, full, complex, rich, beautiful, like the garden of my dreams. I'm not going to write the poem, as I'm not a poet, and I haven't found that anyone else has written it, though I don't read much poetry, either. I don't believe that Dickens, that pre-eminently urban author, is commonly regarded as a notable writer of landscape description, but have recently become conscious of his sensitivity to the beauty of the countryside and his ability to describe it. From Nicholas Nickleby: [after a night of drinking and riot, ending in a quarrel] "They...emerged upon the open road,... Fields, trees, gardens, hedges, everything looked very beautiful; the young man scarcely seemed to have noticed them before, though he had passed the same objects a thousand times. There was a peace and serenity upon them all strangely at variance with the bewilderment and confusion of his own half-sobered thoughts, and yet impressive and welcome." And from Bleak House: [on a trip to visit a friend in the country] "It was delightful weather. The green corn waved so beautifully, the larks sang so joyfully, the hedges were so full of wild flowers, the trees were so thickly out in leaf, the bean-fields, with a light wind blowing over them, filled the air with such a delicious fragrance! [and the friend's garden] But indeed, everything about the place wore an aspect of maturity and abundance. The old lime-tree walk was like green cloisters, the very shadows of the cherry-trees and apple-trees were heavy with fruit, the gooseberry-bushes were so laden that their branches arched and rested on the earth, the strawberries and raspberries grew in like profusion, and the peaches basked by the hundred on the wall. Tumbled about among the spread nets and the glass frames sparkling and winking in the sun, there were such heaps of drooping pods, and marrows, and cucumbers, that every foot of ground appeared a vegetable treasury, while the smell of sweet herbs and all kinds of wholesome growth (to say nothing of the neighboring meadows where the hay was carrying) made the whole air a great nosegay." Melissa, with the help of Charles Dickens

It must have begun when I was a child on a summer morning in my grandfather's garden in coastal Massachusetts. He was a romantic. We have a photo of him holding my grandmother on his lap when they were both in their 70s. She looks uncomfortable. He is positively beaming with love, pride and delight. He was also a terrible tease. One of his sayings was, "'Tis better to have loved and lost than to have won and been forever bossed." Anyway, he grew roses which filled his entire tiny garden except for a (very) few perennials and a (very very) few vegetables. The roses not only covered the ground, they grew up on trellises all around the garden. I had the impression that roses filled that garden in three dimensions. I must have smelled an old garden rose that summer morning because that memory lay latent until I smelled it again when I was in my thirties. Then I knew what I was smelling was an old garden rose and at that time I began reading the Graham Stuart Thomas' rose books. In my grandfather's garden I was enthralled with the process of layering when one summer my grandfather layered a rose branch into a galvanized bucket and the following summer severed the branch from the mother plant, dug up the bucket and handed it to my father for the 1,000+ mile trip home to be planted in our garden. My father, son of described grandfather, grew hybrid teas and 'Paul's Scarlet', 'American Beauty' and, later, 'Blaze', these last three given to him by his father. I liked the fragrant hybrid teas very much; 'Chrysler Imperial', 'Crimson Glory' and even 'Peace' but it was the old roses that instantly touched my heart with their scent. Cath

I have just watched growing your veg and felt that Carol Klein was getting just a little desperate in her use of superlatives to enthuse about peas and carrots. I admire Carol immensly and thought her coverage of Chelsea was the best I have seen in a long time but I think she should be given more freedom over content. Gardening is a fascinating and wonderful subject but TV coverage has worsened and worsened with the kind of dumbing down that does no favours to anyone. I would love to tune in to an intelligent and exciting gardening programme but it frankly doesn't exist at present. There is an audience for an intelligent and articulate programme that captures some of the magic we all experience when we produce a wonderful plant from a tiny seed or cutting, or dash out to the garden to see the first snowdrop or hellebore in spring. A programme that guides beginners but also appeals to the experienced amongst us. We also need to see more plant appeal and less emphasis on design that will seem old hat by next year. Come on TV and ask us what we would like to see. Monty Don is just a little too worthy, Alan Titchmarsh did better but I would still like to see new presenters who really know their stuff. Personal slating of individuals doesn't really help. If they had more say over content perhaps they would have more appeal to gardeners. What do you think?

Toxicity is a measure of how detrimental a substance is to something. All pesticides are toxic to the wee critters they are meant to control and may be, in varying degrees toxic to animals and humans as well. Since Insecticidal Soaps do kill some insects they are toxic to those insects. Pyrethrins are toxic to more insects a broader spectrum of them and includes many beneficial insects. Toxicity is relative and the dose that kills an insect may not do much harm to a human while others have been found to be toxic to humans in fairly small doses. Many of the substances we use today are being found in our drinking water, Nitrates, from high Nitrogen fertilizers, in our drinking water is one of many and some believe those come from "farms" while many homeowners contribute by applying to much fertilizer. Neem is toxic to some insects but is not, in normal amounts used, toxic to humans and has been used in India for centuries by humans for many things including tooth cleaning. A basic premise of organic growing is that plants growing in a good healthy soil will be less susceptible to attack and harm from insect pests and plant diseases so the soil plants are growing in is the most important part of the garden to an organic grower. Then an organic grower may take actions that limit the need for using pesticides, using plant protectors (Floating Row Covers, inter cropping, etc.), not growing plants that are very susceptible to insect pest attack. kimmq is kimmsr