Mary Jane Paterson - Rhubarb Rhubarb: A correspondence between a hopeless gardener and a hopeful cook

Mary Jane Paterson trained at Leiths School of Food and Wine and once even worked at the English Gardening School as a cook. Her love of food is legendary, her fare is fabulous and everyone looks forward to going to her dinners. She has recently undertaken drama training and fits in voice-overs when she isnt wondering whats in her fridge.

Jo Thompson is one of the UKs leading garden designers, renowned for her exquisite planting and innate sense of place. Jo has won numerous awards, including gold medals at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show. She is an RHS Judge and Garden Advisor, and contributes to magazines and newspapers including the Sunday Times . Her own garden is, of course, a Work in Progress.

Thank you to our families and thank you to our dogs for
taking us on the walks where it all began

Dear Gardener,

As you know I LOVE tulips. Tulips are my favourite flower. The planting of them, however, terrifies me. You see, as a virgin gardener, the thought of digging holes in my flower bed is simply scary. I know I sound idiotic but I just need some planting advice and to know if you think they are better in pots or scattered over the garden. I feel they are more formal than that. I just dont understand how you avoid all the other bulbs and roots. Thanks to you Ive got hundreds of bulbs to plant, and I am grateful for them, especially at the promise of a wonderful spring morning with ramrod-straight tulips staring up at a blue sky from their pots. I want to plant them myself but am scared of going wrong Advice? And should we peruse the history of the noble tulip? Do you know the Dutch story in detail you know, how tulips were once worth a fortune, etc etc

Cook

Dear Cook,

Borders and beds, pots and planters wherever theres a nook. I pack em much in.

The most important thing is not to allow tulip bulbs to get soggy. Its common sense if you think about it: look at the bulb and imagine it sitting in our Wealden clay for five months, waiting to bloom. Disaster. So, if its been raining for days on end, as it has been for what seems like weeks here, just be patient and wait a while. Tulip bulbs wont come to any harm by going in a few weeks late, as long as they have been stored somewhere cool and dry. I confess to planting in January a couple of years ago, just because up until then I couldnt find a nice enough day to go outside. Bulb planters really take the hard work out of the job and bulb planters with long handles (I reckon devised for the infirm) are actually a stroke of genius: no bending down, no muddy knees and the bulbs get planted to the right depth. As for the other plants, Ive been telling you for ever: just plant the bulbs where there arent plants it is that simple, I promise you. I know youre worried about existing bulbs, but if you take a photo of them when theyre flowering, youll have a pretty good idea. I know its a bit of a faff but it will save you the irritation of slicing a happy bulb in two.

Anna Pavord wrote the seminal work on the tulip a book called, you guessed it, The Tulip . She describes how, when it arrived from Turkey, the tulip took Western Europe by storm and almost drove people crazy in their anguish and desperation to collect prize specimens. You can imagine it: such an exotic, sturdy yet delicate flower, with stems taking their own shape in vases. My favourite combination of the moment is Jimmy, Cairo and Ronaldo: toffee-coloured Cairo seems weird, but when you put it with purple and burgundy and deep red sumptuous.

The best of the best of the best has to be La Belle Epoque think damask fabrics and Colefax and Fowler circa 1983. I promise Ill remind you in a few months, when its bulb-ordering time.

Are you out in the garden? I tried calling yesterday but I guessed you must be still outside in this fab sunshine celebrating the emergence of your tulip bulbs the idea you mentioned on the phone of holding a tulip festival certainly is an admirable, if somewhat optimistic, goal. But I know Ill be laughing on the other side of my face when your bulb display is a local institution in your dotage. Just imagine: you yourself would be an actual institution youd love that. Youd be a date in the diary, a high day or even a holiday. Hyperbole aside, I think youd actually be really good at that, as youre pretty efficient at hosting events in general. I crumble into a heap at the thought of more than three people for lunch, yet while Im crumbling youre probably whipping up an apple crumble and making your table look rather wonderful at the same time. I forgot to tell you Ive been inspired by your table linen now theres a statement I never thought Id make, but there it is. Walking down the Kings Road the other day (be still, my beating heart but how I miss the streets of London!), I noticed the little slice of heaven that is William Yeoward was having a sale, so nipped in and before I knew it, pounds had been spent on eight lilac cotton tablemats which at the time I thought might change my life and inspire me to invite seven for supper. But in the cold light of day I realised that it was probably more like a displacement activity no change there. For as long as I can remember Ive been putting off trying to give up procrastinating; I sound like a greetings card but its true. I find myself wondering how much more I might have achieved if I had, say, actually read the whole of Tess of the dUrbervilles at A level, rather than just the introduction and Brodies Notes . The irony is that when I read it for the first time twenty years later, it turned out to be rather a gripping read. But you remember what it was like when we were seventeen the things people told you to do were the things you definitely werent going to do, at any price.

Table settings and sunshine turn my thoughts to Easter. For all my lack of adroitness at making a table look spit-spot , I do get very overexcited at the thought of rustling up a festive decoration or two. (Remember last year, when I realised my greatest achievement was the fact that my Halloween decorations actually made small children weep as they walked up the garden path? The life-size animatronic witch was a particular triumph.) So Im rooting out the slightly bedraggled, stick-legged , almost fluffless tiny yellow chicks, and decorations for the Easter Tree by the way, what is that all about? Did you ever have an Easter Tree as a child? In the words of George W. Bush, that is some weird ****.

For some reason, as a teenager I always wanted to make a Simnel cake. I remember tearing the annual Easter recipe article out of my mothers Perfect Housewife magazine and planning one day to feed my own family with it. As things have turned out, no one here will ever touch it either I have to admit the effect of the whole marzipanball combo isnt really what youd call mouthwatering. Do you have any ideas for a good Easter-ish teatime cake which anyone will actually eat? (I know the labrador will eat it, but thats not the point.)