A second chance

IT was one of those overheard snatches of conversations that immediately makes you keen to hear the rest of it. “You know, I really wasn’t in the mood to go,” the woman on the seat in front of me was

VERONICA had only recently moved to the town, so she was surprised to recognise the woman walking towards her. Yet, when their eyes met, 30 years rolled away. “Helen?” Veronica said. “It is you, isn’t

To hide my new garden’s nakedness, I planted trees. Damson and mirabelle plum, ‘Discovery’ and reinette apples, two pears, a quince and a ‘Nottingham’ medlar. There was a purple-leaved filbert, a ‘Che

EACH year, before the holiday brochures landed, John’s seed catalogue arrived in the post. Ellen waited, knowing its arrival would bring a flood of memories she wasn’t strong enough to deal with. She

Sylvia was bored to tears. She almost wished she’d gone with the others to the garden centre. But she’d had it with garden centres, and what was the point when the gardens here were looked after by pr

When writer Sheila M Averbuch and her husband moved into their Pencaitland home in East Lothian over 20 years ago, the garden was little more than a flat upper lawn with a steep slope down to the bung