Do I look like I have my life together?
From the outside, I look like I have my life together. The garden is immaculate. Beds are freshly mulched, edges are crisp, everything is lush, thriving, and suspiciously well-behaved. It’s the kind of garden that suggests its owner probably also folds fitted sheets and has a colour-coded pantry.
This is a lie.
For every square metre of perfection outside, there is an equal and opposite collapse happening indoors. The flower beds? Flawless. The laundry? A three-foot mountain of clean clothes that have achieved sentience and are now living their own independent lives. We no longer “put washing away” in this house. We mine for it. The kids just wander in there like it’s a retail experience. “Mum, have you seen my hoodie?” Yes. Section B. Mid-pile. Good luck.
The Whitehouse (my greenhouse) - my pride and joy - is immaculate. Seedlings are thriving. Everything is labelled. It’s giving “organised, capable adult” vibes. But step inside the actual house and suddenly it’s giving… “something happened here” vibes instead.
The dining table? Not currently a dining table. It’s more of a temporary holding facility for everything I haven’t yet bothered to find a home for. A seedling tray covered with a kitchen utensil to prevent feline invasion, wooden toadstools, bits of string, and The Son’s favourite boardgame. At this point, if you wanted to eat there, you’d need to book excavation equipment.
And don’t even get me started on the dirty windows.
I’m not a “pop in anytime!” person. Absolutely not. If you show up unannounced, you’ll catch me in my natural habitat: standing in the kitchen, surrounded by chaos, pretending I was just about to deal with it. I need warning. Enough notice to take action. Ideally with an accompanying countdown. I need time to run through the house, grab everything that doesn’t belong, and aggressively relocate it into cupboards, drawers, and boxes so that when you arrive, it’ll look clean.
And when you arrive? Do NOT open anything.
So, if you’ve ever looked at my garden and thought, how does she manage all of that and a household? Let me reassure you.
I don’t.
If the garden and my house were children, I have a favourite, and I’m not even pretending otherwise. The garden gets my time, my energy, my attention. The house gets… vibes. Occasionally a panic clean. And I’m TOTALLY fine with that. The house looks lived in. Ok, it’s slightly chaotic and mildly concerning in places.
But the garden? The garden looks incredible.
Which do you choose? House or garden? And if you say both, then you’re some kind of superhuman. Tell me your secret! And….do you even sleep?
Did you know?
The secret language of flowers 🌸
In the Victorian era, flowers weren't just pretty - they could carry a message. From the 1820s to the 1880s, lovers and suitors in Britain and America used bouquets to communicate feelings they couldn't necessarily say aloud. Each flower had its own meaning, and floral dictionaries were published to help people decode them.
The trouble was, the system became ridiculously complicated. Different books gave different meanings, and even the way a flower was presented could change its message. The Royal Horticultural Society notes that tilting a ranunculus could mean the difference between “You are radiant with charms” and essentially “You’re a bit full of yourself.” Apparently, romance required a horticultural degree!
What’s new on Behind the Garden Gate this week?
🌹Nitty Gritty: this week I talk about how I prefer to bloom scroll rather than doom scroll and why gardening is the perfect hobby in this modern digital world.
🍅Nitty Gritty: and also this week, I talk about why my 20-year-old self would have found my 51-year-old self the most spectacularly boring person ever to walk this earth.
Just a reminder that at the end of this month, I’ll be closing down my website. You can find all the future content on my Substack page under The Manic Botanic. Thanks for your support on this format. I do appreciate it. Unfortunately, it’s just not cost effective to keep it up.