No truly addicted gardener can relax on holiday

Illustration by Clara Dupré

How could anyone want a holiday? Never mind the risk of kidnapping and shipwreck, how could one transport enough books? Anxious little swot that I was, I already knew life was chaos, more Bacchae than La Isla Bonita. In adulthood, these fears have been eclipsed by a greater, darker terror. Summer would come, the height of the growing season, and I would be expected to leave my garden.

No truly addicted gardener can relax when far from home. Those of us who grow fruit and vegetables, in containers, on a roof terrace, are the real victims. So greedy am I for greenery, so insatiable for plant-life that every fruit-punnet, yoghurt pot and takeaway cup is press-ganged into outdoor service, its contents obliged to grow into and upon its neighbour, the whole co-dependent bean-tentacled vine-tendrilled maelstrom lashed together with glittery present-string and lost hairbands. How could I trust any house-sitter with that?

Summer is the worst time to leave this deranged paradise. It needs constant attention: the hotter it is, the more needy it becomes. I run out of handleless saucepans to catch the rain, scour charity shops for soup-plates. And, every year, I make the same basic error and squish wildly different plants into the same undersized container, then remember, once their roots are good and entangled, that they all need opposing quantities of water, nitrogen, potassium, drainage. See that delicious chaos of edible leaves – coriander, purple shiso, dandelion, parsley – needing merely a sprinkle of water once, maybe twice, a day? They’d be fine alone but, like survivors in a disaster movie, they’re sharing limited resources with: a) an unflowering dahlia; b) a voracious supermarket chilli; c) bolting seedlings of Welcome Tsai Tai (Red Stem) and Asparagus Kale; and d) one of my bedroom rose geraniums enjoying its own private summer holiday.

No one else understands my babies. I mean, my plants. Even the most dedicated stand-in won’t know their delicate requirements, or even see them. Behind these hydrophobic bullies, lychnis and wall flowers, oregano, cowers a spindly spare tomato plant, hand-reared from a side-shoot. Listen: you can hear it mewing piteously in the hot summer night. Beth Chatto, one of my horticultural heroes, wisely corralled her dry and damp and general plants in entirely separate gardens. Mine have to share the same downcycled wire in-tray; no wonder I’m not on Gardeners’ World.

Everyone, possibly even the Queen of Pop, knows that holiday fun is a mirage. Yet, time and time again, my so-called loved ones expect me to Go Away, then fail to rig up a costly irrigation solar-powered infrastructure to protect all I hold dear. This year, bravely, I went to Donegal during the heatwave. I had a fantastic time, unlike my greengage sapling (desiccated), garlic chives (frizzled), chicories (evaporated). Even the thyme carked it. Returning to the danger-zone was terrible.

Worse still, I had another trip planned.

However, with maturity comes wisdom; arguably genius. This year, for the first time, I found comfort in my sorrow. I went to the mountains of mainland Greece and developed a new area of expertise: Peloponnesian plants. I don’t mean the waterfalls of bougainvillea, cypresses, leathery oleanders, technicolored lantana, balconies bristling with salmon pelargoniums, all of which, like retsina and regal infanticide, are so much classier in their natural Hellenic home. And, because it was so hot, and dry, I barely saw a single aubergine-patch, let alone had a chance to discuss them, non-verbally, with their lucky growers.

No seaweed; few seed-heads. And I didn’t even, despite powerful temptation, steal: neon-pink head-sized succulents or hedgehoggy agaves; boughs of the intoxicating cinnamon basil you can’t get off your fingers or out of your mind; cuttings of grape-vines; even any ripe figs. OK, loads of figs. But they were wild. In their souls. As was the roadside fennel, the pomegranates and lemons which accidentally jumped into my suitcase.

No, this time I became a specialist. I hadn’t realised how many different ways of growing olives there are. Then again, I’d never been to the mainland, specifically Kalamata, in Laconia, home of the greatest olives of them all. Here I beheld, and narrated to my lucky, lucky girlfriend, the huge variety of cultivation techniques: spaced widely or tightly; strung with mysterious cables; surrounded by red soil or dry grass or banked with rock; the next generation of baby trees either planted between them like princelings, or shunted off to a separate nursery-patch. What they had in common was a rugged, rather butch, resilience. It was inspiring. No more would I helicopter-water, raging against the drought. I’d embrace dryness.

I flew home revived (the point of holidays), ready to garden Greekly, already visualising the purpose-made sacred grove into which I’d move my single olive treelet. But what was this, dashing the plane windows as we landed in Luton? The rains had swept Britain, my roof terrace their epicentre. Never mind the rosemary; e Even the spearmint and sorrel were waterlogged. Time to remove the soup-bowls and start emergency drainage. Thanks for nothing, Madonna. Stick to Like a Prayer; I’m back on the Sophocles.