Sharpham in Kathy Slack's Rough Patch

The metal gate is straight out of central casting: picture-perfect secret-garden material – battered, rusty, not quite on its hinges thanks to the climbing wild clematis that is slowly conquering it. Fully in character, the gate creaks as I open it. Not a little squeak. This is no am-dram gate; it’s a pro and probably practises this performance daily. It’s a proper cartoon, full-volume, haunted house creak, oozing mystery and drama such as would make Karloff proud.
Ordinarily I’d be delighted that such textbook gothic charm should announce my arrival into a walled kitchen garden but today I cringe because this creak is the loudest thing I’ve heard all day, and that probably also goes for the 20 other people hidden around the estate whose peace I have just shattered.

I wince my way into the garden, the whole melodrama having been repeated as per the sign instructing me to ‘please close the gate’, and instantly all is forgotten. I am transported. Rows of green beans, tangled and riotous, stretch before me. Battalions of kale trunks are tucked neatly under butterfly netting. A sweet-shop of colours makes up the cut-flower beds, yellow fennel flowers lolling against the tepee of sweet peas as Alchemilla mollis quietly takes over underneath. Everywhere I look is dripping with pumpkins, courgettes, beetroots, peas, leaves of every colour. And weaving through it all are nasturtiums, calendula, borage, left to run wild like naughty, gleeful children. In the distance, against the long brick wall that borders the garden, I can see a vast lean-to glasshouse struggling to contain a jungle of tomatoes, aubergines and cucumbers. It is heaven. Sheer exuberant, effortless abundance. I think I might cry at the beauty and joy of it all. Taking my shoes off, the better to enjoy the grass paths that mark out the beds, I pad my way to the bench at the end of the dahlia beds. The bench gives me a perfect view of this glorious garden and a hint at the menu for my next few days, since virtually all the food comes from this kitchen garden. From my bench I can see just how much is packed into this space.

I am bowled over the productivity. It is bigger, more tightly packed and better run than my patch. But I feel at home among these vegetables. So, I decide to stay for a bit. In fact, I do not move for two hours.
Two. Hours. Can you imagine it? Just sitting. For two hours. Have you ever actually done that? No, me neither. Not until then. Nothing to do, nothing to achieve, nothing to think about, no phone/book/pen/humans to distract. Just nature.
At first, I think the only sound I hear is the vegetables rustling in the warm breeze and I am thankful for such quiet company. But gradually I realise that this place is anything by silent. Blackbirds jab at the soil, flicking it aside in their pursuit of worms; something unidentified ferrets about in the undergrowth; a squirrel, claws clattering on the bricks, scuttles along the wall of the garden with cheeks stuffed full of contraband.

Read Kathy's account in a national newspaper about how she improved her mental health through connecting to gardening and the land