Clever RHS – taking on the Plastercine garden with all the attendant publicity driven by Top Gear Presenter James May http://www.topgear.com/us/the_show/bios/james_may. And then justifying the otherwise unjustifiably non-living garden by awarding a Plastercine medal. Just one criticism of the otherwise unimpeachable RHS: why bang on about getting children into gardening and then ban small children from Chelsea? I suppose they leave the under fives to enjoy the hooligan tendencies of the Hampton Court Flower Show. http://www.rhs.org.uk/whatson/shows/hamptoncourt2009/.

I feel that this is an issue Garden Monkey http://thegardenmonkey.blogspot.com/200 … htmlshould address. S/he was in the Gardening Matters tent when James are I were (in theory) in charge. Still don’t know who it is. Guesses in the comment box please. In the meantime I will try to persuade The Monkey, who is too busy to do much of his/her blogging s/he says, to guest blog here.

This weekend marks the first Cottesbrooke plant fair in Northamptonshire. Cleve West, James Alexander Sinclair, Camilla Swift and Phillippa May snuffling around the stalls. A lot of Chlesea Flower Show refusnics are exhibiting. High quality stuff. Chiltern Seeds …heavenly unusual plants. Woottens whose catalogue alone is swoonable. Odds swing seats, hats and pretty fabrics. Good food and an amble through James’ excellent double herbaceous border behind the garden monkey statue…which makes me think, once again, that James is the GM. He swears he isn’t.    

May the verdant bagpipes of destiny lead you along 2011’s most rewarding routes    

Lake swimming last night. Water lily flowers tight shut. Vast pike leaps out of the water lily pads beside me.

Now I will stick to admiring my own mini lilies, by day, from my pike-free garden.    

Roy Lancaster, that gentle, adorable plantsman whose passion for trees makes me want to buy a field and get planting, was giving a talk in the Gardening Matters tent. An elderly gentleman in the front row got up to go. Roy made a cheery comment – but the ‘gentleman’ answered with a rude gesture. Bizarre and very un Chelsea. I suppose that, as chair, I should have had him composted. Instead I send dagger thoughts to you Mr RudeBoy.    

Walk to work talking to Mark Stephens my mate who’s defending Assange. A green woodpecker flies up across the path.
Along the canal a heron pecks at a sandwich surrounded by a flock of seagulls.
The gardeners in Queen Mary’s garden are pruning but will not let me take one of the rose buds which looks like antique silk

FT’s office party. Buses chug us along the Thames, South Bank lights twinkling in the water, to a nightclub overlooking Regent’s Street. Wembley lighting up the sky in one direction, millennium wheel in another. Cranes everywhere. A magnificent Egyptian frieze around the top of the building opposite.

Walk home past bling Christmas lights where Kentish Town Road crosses Regents canal..two man-sized snowmen, flashing multi-coloured lights    

although I am too hot to think. Writing about no-chemical swimming pools is heating instead of cooling my brain. And I cannot remember the name of this plant.

I’m told that it seeds everywhere. I was told that about Nicotiana sylvestris and I can’t manage to get it to flower let alone seed.
Then there’s the enigma of the Monkey ‘C’.