Garden view

A passion for plant-collecting can soon become an obsession, says David Marsden. Step away from the sales bench!

Blogger David Marsden confesses to an addiction

Awise old woman once said: “You can never have too many books, plants or Tupperware lids.” Apart from her quite potty obsession with plastic containers, she was right of course. For me, ‘too many books’ is simply nonsensical. Likewise, ‘Too many plants’ doesn’t compute. Or at least, it didn’t until I no longer had space to house my enormous plant collection.

It all began when I worked in a garden with two big glasshouses. These structures, even when stuffed with summer tomatoes and cucumbers, easily swallowed up my Anorak Collection of cacti and succulents. I’d sneaked them in from home and as the owner didn’t say anything – barely spoke to me at all, in fact – I started filling his benches and shelves with my plants. The owner didn’t utter a word. I used the bigger specimens as prickly displays in hot corners against the big house. And, by that devious ruse, I proved that my cacti were there for the benefit of his garden only. Still he didn’t say anything.

Alas, succulents and cacti weren’t the limit of my plant-collecting compulsion. Nope. Prior to gardening, I’d worked at an alpine nursery and when told to throw out old and weedy plants, I found I couldn’t. I simply couldn’t dump salvageable life into a skip, not if there was a chance I could coax it back to health. And so, giddy with thriftiness, I’d fill my car boot with sad sempervivum, soggy sedum and scraggy saxifrage. Back in my own greenhouse (in truth, a polythene wardrobe), I’d feverishly weed, de-head, de-pest, re-pot. Almost without fail, these near-death plants chose life and flourished. Using the skills I’d learnt at the nursery, I propagated them too, from cuttings, seed and offsets. Within a year, I was selling my bounty on an unattended rickety table outside my front door, cackling as a glittering stream of beer money fluttered through my letter box. I re-homed many of my offspring in my garden, or gave them to friends, but I hoarded the majority in the big glasshouses at work. Like a grunting miser, I grew them and fattened them up until they were mature enough for division or potting on.

I bought more and swapped more. I was swivel-eye obsessed, trembling and cooing oddly as my collection grew. The owner still didn’t say a word, still mostly ignored me, but I dotted pretty alpines in terracotta pots about the grounds, just in case he asked. He didn’t.

But then, after 10 years, the owner decided to sell up. In a panic, I realised that I no longer had space for my vast collection. I no longer owned my polythene wardrobe by then, and so, with rictus grin, I began giving away my treasures. There were cacti and alpines, but also precious pots of auriculas; trees and shrubs; buckets of bamboo and huge perennials; potted ferns and hostas; and iron planters stuffed with lilies or groaning with agapanthus. My delighted thrifty brother took away a carload; my delighted thrifty sister took two. I dumped greenery on bemused friends whether they wanted it or not. Party hosts greeted me with tight smiles as I proffered a bottle of wine and yet another bloody cactus. Some darling plants, I had to leave behind. When we recently moved to a new house, my plants still filled three leafy carloads and a verdant transit. We now have an unexpected greenhouse and a bigger-than-expected garden. Room for more plants? Certainly! After all, you can never have too many. ✿

I couldn’t dump salvageable life into a skip, not if I could coax it back to health