I came back to this garden four years ago.

It had been in my family for over sixty years, but the borders —once orderly, abundant, and alive — had slipped into silence. Neglected for decades, they whispered not of ruin, but of waiting. Someone had to take it on. I was given the offer. And I said yes.

Not out of knowledge. I knew nothing about gardening. I say that without modesty. I mean it in the raw, unvarnished way one might say: “I had never held a script, but I stepped on stage.” What I had was memory. Instinct. And a longing to make something beautiful.

So I began. Clumsily, grandly, stubbornly. Over ambitious at first — naturally. Then came the realisation. And eventually, the epiphany: This was not a garden. This was a theatre.

The borders were acts. The plants were characters. The seasons, the story. And I — I had become both playwright and audience.

The Cultivated Stage is not a guidebook. It isn’t interested in tidy rules, shopping lists, or Pinterest-perfect planting plans. It’s not here to tell you what to do—it’s here to ask why you’re doing it.

It’s a blog about meaningful gardening—where design is led by memory, where emotion shapes the soil, and where borders tell stories as much as they hold plants. It’s a space to explore the delicate tension between order and chaos, and the strange intimacy of placing something in the ground and watching it decide for itself whether or not to live.

You’ll find thoughts here on narrative planting—where a border unfolds like a chapter and a rose might play a heroine or a ghost.
You’ll find reflections on theatrical gardening, where staging, contrast, and pause matter more than colour wheels. You’ll find, always, the tug of memory and myth — the sense that a garden remembers what we’ve forgotten, and reminds us gently.
And you’ll find the realities of place: Aberdeenshire, Scotland — wide skies, sudden storms, a hardiness zone that demands resilience and rewards patience.

And then there is Agatha — my Wire Fox Terrier, enforcer, scene-stealer, and undisputed Director of Uncontrolled Energy. She greets every rustling leaf and wayward bee with suspicion, charges the borders like a tempest in fur, and treats all flouncy roses as potential insurgents. She is not the quiet heart of the performance—she is its engine, its metronome, and its occasional act of God.

So no, this is not a “how-to” blog. It’s a ledger of the living—of what thrived, what failed, what taught me something.

If you, too, garden with instinct… If your borders are conversations and your soil remembers stories… If you believe a garden can be a place of memory, drama, and defiance — Then you’re not just a reader. You’re part of the audience. Perhaps even part of the cast.

I welcome your reflections.
Share your own garden stories, your missteps, your unexpected triumphs. Comment, correspond, contribute if you wish. This is a space for dialogue, not monologue.

The garden still grows.
And so do I.
Welcome to The Cultivated Stage.