I've always loved how greenhouses look, the light caught and held in the glass, the air heady with the warm damp smell of wet earth, of green things growing. And yet I never wanted one. Glasshouses were for other people, English rectories and botanical gardens, the Victorians who built palaces of iron and glass to keep their orchids alive through winters that would have killed them. Plus, at the back of my mind, it always felt like a bit of a cop out. A garden outdoors is ha

My mum and I have been having the same argument for about twenty years. It goes like this. I say I love the yellow cosmos in our compound because those hot little suns add instant cheer wherever they can be seen. Or our nasturtiums, climbing wild over everything, huge weird-shaped peppery leaves and orange trumpets spilling out everywhere. I think they're glorious. She looks at them, and says, "That's a weed." And every time I want to ask the same, irritated question: says wh

The tomato’s story did not begin in Italy. It began in the Andes, small and defiant, growing wild long before it ever met olive oil. The Aztecs called it xitomatl — the navel fruit — for its rounded shape and the dimple at its base, and in the markets of Tenochtitlan it appeared in every shape and colour — large, small, serpent-shaped, nipple-shaped; red, very red, yellow, almost gold. The pulp was crushed with chiles and ground squash seeds, worked into sauces and ladled ov