Hello, and a warm welcome. I am Dot Hawkins. For over fifty years I have gardened in the Yorkshire Dales, on thin, stony hill soil behind a dry-stone wall, the way my own grandmother taught me. To me a garden is never just work: it is a piece of home that grows again every year. This page is my way of passing on what I have learned over the years — from the notebook that never leaves my side.
My grandmother’s garden
I grew up on a small hill farm in the Dales, where the wind is strong and nothing grows by itself. My grandmother still kept the best kitchen garden in the village: sweet peas on the wall, potatoes in neat rows and herbs by the back door. As a child, my job was to fill the watering cans and pick the slugs off the lettuces.
Only much later did I understand what a rare school that garden was. There I learned to test the soil with my hands, to read the weather in the sky and to see what a plant was missing just by looking at it. None of it came from a book; it was all passed on from hand to hand.
A life spent with my hands in the soil
All my life I have sown, planted and harvested: beans and potatoes in summer, apples in autumn, and in winter the houseplants on every windowsill. I was never a gardener by trade; I was a daughter, a granddaughter and a neighbour, and I learned by doing, season after season.
Patience, my best garden helper
You cannot rush a garden. I have learned to give a rose its time, to leave a cutting in peace and not to check every day whether it has roots yet. The best beds are often the ones you look after quietly and regularly.
If my garden has a philosophy, it is patience. Every plant has its season, and nature teaches us to wait: an orchid does not flower faster because you wish it would, and an apple is ripe only when it is ready. People, I can tell you, are not so different.
My small everyday pleasures
Early in the morning I walk round the garden with a cup of tea and see what has grown overnight. I have a word with the neighbours over the wall, swap cuttings and seeds, and in the evening I write in my notebook what went well and what I will do differently next year.
What you will find here
Between the vegetable plot, the rose bed and the orchids on the windowsill, there is always something to tell. I share my planting tricks here the way I learned them myself: with no fuss, step by step, and only the ones I have tried with my own hands.
If my words keep you company a little on your own path, that makes me truly happy. And if you would like to write me a few lines, you will find everything you need on the contact page. I look forward to hearing from you.
— Dot, from the Yorkshire Dales