Gardening Tips With Jeremy Hunt

You’ve learnt to take care of yourself (a bit) now learn how to take care of some flowers from everyone’s 7453rd favourite Oxford graduate.

Step 1: Decide what flowers you’re going to plant. Choose whichever ones you like – as long as they’re not foreign. The N RHS wants homegrown, British flowers from now on, please. Just leave those other ones to grow in their own country.

Step 2: Make sure you’ve got the right gardening tools. If you lose yours as often as I do, you might want to ask a friend to lend you some. I often borrow from my elderly neighbour Mrs May – her whole cabinet is full of them.

Step 3: After a hugely inflated waiting time, you’re ready to start preparing the ground. To do this, take a gardening fork and relentlessly hack at the ground until it’s a shadow of its former self. People will say things like, ‘Jeremy you’re ruining everything’ – but you’re actually being firm and authoritative. Just ignore the criticism, I do!

Step 4: Time to get planting. Dig yourself a hole and shove a bulb inside; repeat until you’ve dug yourself so many holes that it’s impossible to escape.

Step 5: At this point most people would advocate lots of sun, water, and possibly some extra nutrients to help them grow. I, on the other hand, prefer a different approach. Sure, you can do all those things, but don’t stick to it 100%. Even when people from the NHS – sorry, RHS – tell me that I’m responsible for killing everything I touch, I like to let nature take its course. And, sure enough, when the flowers are full grown they’re fine! Some of them are a bit limp and occasionally die of neglect, but at least they’re homegrown: and that’s what really matters.

Want to know more? Buy my manual Jeremy Hints – which is out now and features some hilarious stories about removing parasites, making cuts, and tree surgeons (not real surgeons, luckily!) I’m sure it’s available in your reputable campus bookshop.*

*Surprisingly Jeremy, it isn’t. Our loss I guess.

Image: jbarreiros/flickr