Garden fantasies

In my experience, anyone who is serious about gardening, whether their garden is a hundred hectares of landscape and greenhouses, or a single flowerpot perched precariously in the only spot on the window-ledge that gets any sun, will fantasise about growing plants that are impossible for their climate and location.

I once heard a botanist describe how he managed to get olive trees to fruit on the equator. Basically, it required serious climate control, and both intensive and detailed manipulation of the trees' root temperature, not to mention the not insignificant resources of the National Parks Board of Singapore.

I can grow the kinds of things that gardeners in cooler climates can only dream about - papayas, kaffir lime, dragonfruit, coconuts, birds'-nest ferns that are two metres in diameter instead of cute little houseplants. Bougainvillea and Rangoon Creeper are not hothouse rarities for me, but thugs to be held at bay with a machete and a troop of full-time gardeners.

So naturally I want roses, bruggmansias and poppies, camellias and tea-bushes and quinces (either Cydonia or Chaenomeles is fine, though I find I like the sharp intensity of Chaenomeles better) and Indian persimmons, a summer-house to picnic in that won't result in heat-exhaustion and dengue fever, a potager with tomatoes and rosemary and lavender and saffron...

One can dream.