30 Mar 2010

For Elspeth Thompson, who will be missed

'Love in A Mist'
(photographed in the Crescent Gardens in Alverstoke, Hampshire Oct 2009)

I was greatly saddened to learn yesterday of the death of Elspeth Thompson.  Although I only knew her through her writing, the news of her death was shocking.  She wrote of a gentle, sunny life that most would envy and yet she suffered from depression and took her own life last Thursday.

Elspeth's columns about gardening (and interiors) appeared in both the Sunday Telegraph and Guardian newspapers and her gardening books inspired many urban gardeners (The London Gardener, Urban Garden, A Tale of Two Gardens, to name just a few).  Her blog, 'Off the Rails', is one of only a handful that I return to regularly; her posts revealed a glimpse into her life by the sea as she converted two railway carriages into an eco-home and created a vegetable garden on the Sussex shingle. 

She set up a new blog at the beginning of March, 'Gardening Against the Odds', which I was very much looking forward to following.  It was to be about gardening in the most unpromising of places.  I had meant to send her my photo of a rowing boat planted up with marrows, drifted up on the putting green of a windy seafront in Hampshire.  Now when I see the boat, it will remind me that no-one's life is perfect and I'll stop, count my blessings, be glad of my friends and family and be grateful. 


Elspeth Thompson's obituary in the Telegraph can be read here.  A full obituary will be published this Sunday, 4th April.

1 comment:

  1. It's very sad. She must have felt such despair, and my heart also goes out to her family.

    ReplyDelete

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