It started with the pennisetums. My mother and I were deciding on a variety of Cotinus for her to put in a pot outside her front gate after a very sad crab apple had finally given up the ghost. The mildest of guerrilla gardening. I scrolled through a Gardens Illustrated article on the merits of Graces and Royal Purple’s and mused over whether the lovely colour of C. ‘Young Lady’ is enough to make up for it being dwarf, and the GI website wondered if I would like to read about Pennisetums.

Having just very carefully divided and replanted whole swathes of grasses because last autumn’s plantings seemed to have entirely failed, I absolutely did.

It said:

Which explains why my prairie planting looked about as unlike a prairie as it is possible in Somerset. My stalwarts of Echinops and bronze fennels survived, with the odd rudbeckia dotting in amongst, but not a grass to be seen. It turns out that planting them up last October and expecting a soft meadow this summer was never going to work, and now I have done it all over again.

And once I had got it into my head that I didn’t know enough to be a good gardener, my mind saw evidence of it everywhere. I sat at my desk in the study on a zoom call and watched a single pigeon go along my row of Cavolo Nero and reduce it to stalks. My courgette harvest slowed, just as I wanted to accumulate enough to make Nigel Slater’s confit recipe. My late summer sown hardy annuals have been slow to sprout, although the hoggin paths have taken on a sheen of green as everything that I didn’t want to germinate in the places I didn’t want them to germinate did so. My compost heap, my pride and joy, layered with my first biochar burns, turned out to be too good. The heat rocketed to 72 degrees in less than a day and I have been held hostage, turning it every other morning and scrabbling for more browns to add to try and bring the temperature down to a more microbe-friendly level.

I poured a bowlful of Nimbus seed into a sack of Piggy Sue, rendering them both unsellable. A seriously expensive mistake. I closed the lid on a jar of Echinops seed before it was fully dry and it went mouldy. (I have plenty more.)

I knocked a tin of Nicotiana ‘Bronze Queen’ seed that I was gradually collecting as it ripened onto the floor. (I don’t have any more of this. Nicotiana seed is like dust.) Some in-laws visited with a puppy and the puppy got stung by wasps from the nest in the ground in the orchard and they all left in a hurry with howls of pain and reproachful looks.

It has been that sort of week. Enough to persuade anyone that they are a bit of a fraud. I was in need of a tonic.

Should you be interested in therapies for traumatised children, and I know a disturbing amount about them, there is a saying ‘connection calms’. Much as I wanted to sell off the field for building land, turf over the kitchen garden and go to bed for a week, I decided a trip to town was the only way to shake myself out of a funk. The first attempt, a party to celebrate the publication of the Wolves Lane Flower Company’s book was scuppered by all the trains to Paddington being cancelled.

My second attempt, a triumph of ambition over common sense, was utterly wonderful.

Imagine a house. Then imagine every room filled with British, seasonal flowers, designed and arranged in wonderful, creative, beautiful ways. Then imagine it filled with your favourite people. Familiar people and new people and enthusiastic people who really care about the same things you care about. And then a talk by Shane Connolly and Polly Nicholson that is funny and fascinating and just a little bit gossipy.

Quote of the year goes to Shane. One dahlia in a bud vase, not enough. Adds a side shoot, ‘and that’s what makes it Fabergé’.

I crawled into bed well after midnight on Friday a rejuvenated flower farmer. I arrived at Strawberry Hill House just as the sun went down and so I did not manage to take any decent photos at all but there are plenty on Instagram and I highly recommend finding some pictures of Joanna Games’ Dartmoor hedgerow loop because it was exquisite. I also adored some of the dried installations which is quite unlike me. Bex of Botanical Tales, of course, but also Layla Robinson (top prize for use of chicken wire) and Harebell & Bee (responsible for me bring long oak branches home from my dog walk yesterday).

And so, connection calms. I sat next to the wonderful Philippa of Just Dahlias and I asked her to become the resident Gather dahlia expert. Because if she is good enough for Gardeners’ World, she is good enough for Gather (she was on on Friday 23 Sept if you can get it on iPlayer). I met so many other incredibly lovely and kind people, many of whom said nice things about Gather and my photography.

I came home a new person, ordered £200 worth of seeds from Chilterns and Plant World (because this is what I do when I want to feel hopeful and cheered) and we will try again with pennisetums next year.

That is one of the very best things about gardening. There is always, always next year.