My earliest memories are of being wheeled about (at a great speed!) in a wheelbarrow, picking blackberries from the huge hedge, topping and tailing gooseberries, swinging from the beautiful walnut tree and failing to grow wallflowers that I sowed in a bare patch of earth next to a wall. There was a wild flower that I could dismantle to turn into a miniature parrot and set into an array on a grass stem. When the family grew smaller and we moved to a small suburban house in Manchester, my mother still grew her roses and I developed a taste for strawberry growing, leaving only enough lawn for two to sunbathe on! During my student days, studying Biochemistry and Animal Physiology, another move took my mother and I to a garden in the North Pennines with a large bed of blackcurrants, the fruit with which I learned to love jam-making, despite the tiny size of the kitchen.
