Polar opposites can be a match made in horticultural heaven

My husband and I have nothing in common. I think that’s why we get on so well, and is probably why we’re still together after, oh my goodness, 37 glorious years.

He loves the hills and the call of the high seas, whereas I prefer a sofa, a roaring fire and a good book. He’s analytical, a grafter and a fixer, enjoying nothing better than a tricky repair or construction job. I’m impulsive, probably more creative, but easily discouraged by the smallest of setbacks.

He’s a nightmare in a museum, pausing to read everything – and I mean everything – whereas I want to dart around looking for shiny things and to get to the gift shop. You can imagine how much “fun” I used to have in busy museums when the children were small, trying to keep tabs on three tinies as they zoomed round dinosaurs and sarcophaguses. This is my excuse for not knowing a thing about Egyptology or prehistoric earth, apart from how to scold a three-year-old for bolting towards the exit of the Natural History Museum in a frenzy of toddler overexcitement.

My husband has self-control – I have very little. I’m first on my feet at the theatre, rapturously applauding anything that has moved or delighted me. He’ll talk about it later, once the dust has settled.

He commits to his hobbies – Scottish country dancing, boatbuilding, running, breadmaking – meaning that he achieves spectacular results, with all the satisfaction that comes from his perseverance. I drift from thing to thing – yoga, sewing, learning poems, outdoor swimming, chess, home decor – never quite achieving excellence, but always having a lovely time in the process.

I like jobs that garner praise. Look at the curtains I made! Look – I cut the grass! Look – a headstand! Of course, I do other things as well. My daily walks with my two dearest friends are precious beyond measure to me. I knit and help out and cook and bake and take pride in my house and my family – which is easy, because both are perfect, but both would be a lot less so without my polar opposite other half.

Enough with the faint praise. There’s one place, and only one, where our divergent natures come together to marvellous effect. No, it’s not there. Shame on you, this is a family paper. It’s in the garden.

Our almost comical dissimilarity ensures that we are both hugely happy doing the garden jobs that the other one hates, and the result is a garden which, though not likely to feature on

Beechgrove any time soon, is nonetheless pretty darn nice.

Gardening came late to me, as it does to many of us. Being easily daunted, as mentioned, I always assumed it was highly complex, full of odd words like pleach, and requiring of some kind of training in order to take part. But, a few years ago, I was given a beautiful pair of small leather gardening gloves and a little garden fork. Something clicked – old age, possibly – and out I went.

Our garden is big and it was full of weeds, which was important since it meant that, as a horticultural ignoramus, even I could see the immediate task ahead – pull ‘em out.

To this day, I don’t really “garden”. I weed. I prune. I slash and haul and dig and burn and rake and decimate, until the barrow groans with the compost of the future and I’m wobbly with exhaustion but riding a fresh-air high, much like the cats who watch my work, hazily, from beneath the catnip bush.

I still measure gardening success in barrowloads. If I can’t achieve at least one heap of weeds and clippings whenever those gloves go on, is it really gardening?

There’s always the worry that, in my ignorance and enthusiasm, I may have mistakenly uprooted precious, pretty and tasty seedlings, but I’ve made my peace with that and filed known incidents under collateral damage.

I definitely weeded out the hellebores last winter because, this spring, instead of a scattering of pink blooms throughout the herbaceous border, there was only one wee clump, strangled, clinging to the base of a big shrub, beyond the reach of my clumsy, gloved hands.

Then there’s my husband who is cut from different cloth entirely. He’s the one who built the greenhouse. Plans the planting for the year. Buys the seeds. Sows the seeds. Waters the seeds. Pricks them out. Pots them on. Hardens them off. Plants them out. Covers the tender ones with fleece. Stakes the climbers. Thins out baby veggies. Nets the currants. Earths the tatties.

None of that, to me, is fun. But, then, I suspect he can’t believe his luck as he watches me happily grubbing-up ground elder in the darker reaches of the flowerbeds.

We are a match made in horticultural heaven. And, because we’ve got nothing in common, we’re a deadly combination on a pub quiz team too.