Over the years, gardening has featured heavily on this blog and some of the observations that I made in the garden that Karin and I developed in Northampton appeared in my book Pollinators & Pollination: Nature and Society. At the same time that I was writing this, Karin was writing her first book – The Essential Companion to Talking Therapy – and we often discussed the links between nature, gardening, mental health and relationships between couples.

Fast forward a couple of years to last August. While we were in Kenya teaching on the Tropical Biology Association Field Course, Karin was interviewed by BBC Gardeners’ World presenter Adam Frost for his podcast series about gardening and health. In the interview Karin and Adam chat about how gardens and gardening together can positively affect relationships in couples. The interview has just been released and despite the fact that at the time Karin was recovering from COVID I think that she did very well! Here’s the link to the podcast: https://www.gardenersworld.com/podcast/adam-frosts-gardening-for-health-building-relationships/

Karin has also posted some thoughts about this, in her own inimitable way, on her blog at Medium.

The significance of the photo that accompanies this post is that it’s Karin sitting in front of the tent that we shared in Kenya, enjoying some watermelon, which was just about all she could manage to eat when she had COVID!