I gardened my way through grief. Then cancer struck

It was a mad idea, swapping a 40-foot garden in London for a three-acre spread in Norfolk but that’s the kind of leap you make when you’re running to stay ahead of cancer. My wife Vikki was diagnosed aged 36 and though she had treatment that was initially successful, it returned with a vengeance, several times, until we knew it wasn’t going away again. So, we lived faster and faster, travelling, partying, tasting life to the full, until we saw this extraordinary house and garden in the Norfolk countryside. It felt like a Swallows and Amazons dream, a chance to connect properly with nature, to camp under the stars and have fresh veg for dinner; a perfect playground for our four-year-old daughter, Romy; a wonderful space to entertain family and friends.

The house was large, but the garden was vast – 47 trees, nine lawns, a beech maze in one corner and a former chalk quarry lined with tropical plants in the middle. It would have tested Monty Don, never mind a London couple, one of whom knew little about gardening and the other one less than that. Truth be told, we hadn’t a clue how we were going to look after it. But then who cares about practicalities when cancer’s involved?

We didn’t do much gardening in the time Vikki had left; we were too busy just enjoying it. There were some memorable moments I’ll never forget but way, way too few because she died 18 months after we first moved in. In my mind there was no doubt I was going to try and keep the place going. It felt like a tribute to her and the dreams we’d shared. It already felt like a kind of support too, a fixed point when so much else had crumbled.

In the years that followed, the garden was to become much more: a companion, an inspiration, a frustration, a hobby, a commercial outlet and even a chat-up line.

A few months after Vikki passed away, I discovered a huge supply of onions in some raised beds and visualised some sort of business opportunity. I brought them in, wrapped them in newspaper and filled the house. After several weeks I realised I hadn’t a clue how to realise the plan and just left them. They naturally turned to mush, clinging to the newspaper like toffee and smelling like sulphur. I had to dump the lot and suffered guilt-pangs for weeks, wondering if I’d let Vikki’s legacy down, even if we should move. Looking back, it was just another chapter in the crazy book of grief.

More successful than that was the summer when the garden played Cupid as I spent an afternoon for the first time with my soon-to-be new partner Emma and her children; me shamelessly parading it in front of her, like a city boy with a massive green Porsche, the garden playing the part of a bonkers, horticultural chat-up line.

The succeeding years saw many great memories as the families joined forces and built dens out of branches and leaves, had endless games of tag and danced under the stars as we dished out hot dogs around a glowing firepit.

Through it all I was doing as much gardening as I could: weeding, pruning, clearing but maintaining rather than adding, and doing everything badly – accidentally leaving little tufts in the lawns after mowing so they looked like Tintin’s scalp, over- pruning plants so they never recovered, and digging unwanted strimmer burrows because I couldn’t keep the bloody thing level.

Then, suddenly, cancer struck again – this time it was my turn. Head-neck cancer, stage two. I had to avoid other people for fear of infection so became a recluse in my bedroom, my only contact with the real world the view of the garden outside.

Like James Stewart in Rear Window, I’d watch for hours, obsessed with the stories unfolding in front of me; the squirrels chasing each other; the leaves competing to be the first to fall from the trees; the garden a distraction, a comfort, a reminder that life goes on.

Afterwards, it continued to be an invaluable help as I suffered a marked post-treatment collapse. It’s a mental health issue rarely discussed. What happens after the hospital care ends, when you are let out alone into the world to fend for yourself, when you become for want of a better phrase (and personally I dislike it) a “cancer survivor”.

My diagnosis and treatment were fairly challenging in themselves – 30 radiotherapies, six rounds of chemo, an operation – and I couldn’t have got through it without Emma who was nurse, driver, cook, babysitter, partner and counsellor combined. She got me to the hospital for my many appointments, sorted out my meds (I had bad chemo brain fog), and helped to syringe sustenance into my stomach through a tube when my burned-out neck was closed for business. She did everything with patience, good grace and humour and it wasn’t even the first time; years before, she’d lost her own husband to cancer.

Despite that amazing support, the treatment still felt, occasionally, like physical and mental torture. Ironic then that in retrospect I still feel that the worst bit, for me, was the day I was told “you are all clear, we’ll see you in three months”.

Nothing prepares you for that. There is the occasional warning phrase in a leaflet, the odd support group to hand if you’re lucky but there is no real buttress against the psychological challenges ahead. It’s not so much the uncertainty – we all know cancer might return – but the inexplicable bursts of anger (I bludgeoned a tiny mouse that had strayed in from a nearby field to the house as if I was a serial killer), the sadness, the confusion, the frustration, the loss of identity, all of which I experienced.

I was the same person as before but different. I was picking up the threads of my new life but as a changed individual, one who didn’t yet know who he was. I was lost. I cried. I withdrew. Why didn’t I feel better? I was better, wasn’t I?

And all the time I heard the piercing voices of former cancer sufferers telling me how everything looked brighter, smelt better, sounded clearer (it didn’t to me); how they just wanted to bungee jump for charity, navigate the Amazon, leave the city and make knitwear. I didn’t want to leave the sofa.

I even (shock horror) sometimes missed my cancer or at least missed how I felt psychologically when being treated.

As someone in the system you feel secure and taken care of. It holds you, embraces you, gives you security. Whilst it’s all happening you get enormous support outside too – a tsunami of love. You get sympathy when you have a heart condition or dementia or are ill in a thousand different ways, but nothing comes close to cancer. Not in the power, the reliability of the reaction, not in the simple, unquestioning responses from everyone around. It’s still the Big C, the biggest taboo, the greatest fear.

When you’re dealing with cancer you get preference, you get the benefit of the doubt, you’re cut some slack. There are the small things too. Trying to get your Skybox fixed? Tell them you have cancer. Want to get someone to deliver a parcel when it suits you, not them? Same again.

And then, naturally, post-treatment, a lot of that, if not all, slowly disappears and you have to pick up the pieces. It’s an adjustment, a big one. You’re living in a different world now and I just wasn’t prepared for it.

Thankfully, I recovered from that low. Through the patience and love of those close by, some medication, some meditation, some time passing, some therapy, an understanding GP who admitted they perhaps don’t do enough in that area, and probably some good fortune too.

The garden helped massively. When all else seemed so fragile I would spend hours there: clearing, digging, simple tasks. But the steady rhythm of physical labour gave me a skeleton I might have collapsed without. Sometimes when even the gardening felt too much, I’d sit on the seat looking out across the old chalk quarry and listen to the wind rush through the trees. Nothing happens fast in a garden, and it helped to slow me down. It pulled me back to something older, more fundamental and in doing so I gradually recovered a sense of myself.

I came to understand that what I’d experienced was a phase. That I hadn’t failed in some way. That I was still me, beneath it all and that person wasn’t insane but damaged and slowly getting better.

By this time the kids had grown up and were leaving home, so it also felt the right moment to downsize and move on. Unfortunately, Emma and I couldn’t sell the property, so decided to rent it out as a holiday-let.

For a brief period, I became a full-time horticulturalist, trying to rescue years of neglect under the expert tutelage of Martin, our professional gardener. He was hugely knowledgeable, and I felt inadequate by comparison. When he wielded a spade, it was like another limb; when I used mine, it was like someone attacking an intruder. When Martin sweated, it was heroic, Brad Pitt in Troy; when I did, it was Lee Evans at Wembley.

Covid brought an end to our holiday-let ambitions but as we emerged from its shadow, we did finally manage to sell the house.

It’s been five years now since we left that wonderful garden behind for good and exchanged it for another delightful but much smaller space; room enough to continue my gardening journey but with much less stress.

My book doesn’t quite have a Hollywood ending– I didn’t go from gardening moron to gold medal winner at Chelsea. But the experience of living with that extraordinary three acres is nonetheless seared into my soul.

When I venture out now (and nature walks are as much a part of my day as writing) things have definitely changed. I’m more aware of my surroundings. I look up and around. Take it all in. Just appreciate.

I appreciate that I’m in a place that adds to my sense of wellbeing; one that can instantly restore my perspective; one that has a strength and solidity that is ever more vital in the fractured, fleeting world of today.

My Life in a Garden: Love, Loss and Mulch is out now