Fay Young

Trees in full leaf, bright green under a blue sky reflected in the pond: The Pond picture by Fay Young

One thing always leads to another

I’m a journalist. I’ve always been curious about people and places.

I started writing about other people’s gardens a long time ago and somehow I’ve ended up having a wild garden that’s open to the public.

This site is a collection of my writing on gardens, culture, wildlife, the environment and even a little politics.

The garden is open through Scotland’s Garden Scheme supporting Children’s Hospices Across Scotland.

We are open now for spring walks. Please don’t hesitate to let us know when you’d like to come. Just fill in the Contact form. Give us a call. Find out more about Pond Cottage Garden

  • A last look at Earth – again

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    The adventures of Tim Peake have set me rummaging in an old blog post inspired by an earlier space mission. It’s both interesting and depressing to see how little has changed in the ten years since I wrote it. And that ‘Last Look at Earth’ becomes more symbolically potent as our awareness of climate change grows while…

  • In praise of the shipping forecast: pure poetry

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    The North wind doth blow though not very hard. Our windmill acts like a weathervane even when it’s not turning and it is facing resolutely north. We shall have snow.

  • Look to the islands for pragmatic politics of hope

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    It’s not everyone’s idea of escape. A force 7 gale lashed the boat as we crossed the stormy Sound of Eigg. But we were leaving all visible signs of the general election on the mainland and I welcomed that thought even as I closed my eyes and got my head down, praying I wouldn’t need the…

  • Reds (almost) under the bed

    Reds (almost) under the bed

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    A flurry of white feathers on the pond, a pile of guano on the front doorstep and two peanuts in a corner of the hall. Welcome signs of wildlife at Pond Cottage and, note, they are not all outside the cottage. While swans (mostly) keep to the pond, our doorstep guano is deposited by bats roosting…

  • Poetry breaks the silence of dementia

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    Over the Years, a poem about ageing and Alzheimer’s, stirs a sad, sweet memory but also hope. Dementia is part of family life – and loss – for so many of us now and I remember how it silenced my once sociable father. Yet Paula Jennings’ poetry, drawing on her work in a nursing home,…

  • Bridge of sighs

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    No fuss, no fanfare. Without a tweet or a peep from the press, an invisible shift in the Scottish landscape took place in the early hours of this morning.

  • Politics and a vote for love

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    But I, being poor, have only my dreams; I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. He wasn’t literally poor, of course. William Butler Yeats was born into an Anglo-Irish Protestant family at a time when the landed gentry were still in the last phase of their…

  • Scotland needs jesters

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    I looked a Gift Horse in the mouth. Or, to be more accurate, I joined the tourists in Trafalgar Square snapping pictures of the latest sculpture occupying the Fourth Plinth. After a day in the Houses of Parliament the Tory ‘long term economic plan’ sprang to mind as I admired the skeleton; bronze bones stark and…

  • Ad neverendum?

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    I loiter in the garden and find myself longing for this election campaign to end. And I’m not alone. Over the last few days I’ve been meeting people – politicians, academics and ordinary voters like me – desperate to see the end of #GE2015, as the Twitter hashtags identify this unseemly mess.

  • Blood on the tracks

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    “Many of the smaller ones perched on my hat, and when I carried my gun on my shoulder would sit on the muzzle. During my stay I killed forty-five all of which I skinned carefully.”   I really wish I hadn’t read that extract from David Douglas’s diary describing the birds he killed during his…

  • Can democracy deliver in time for climate change?

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    Is the NHS equipped to deal with floods, gales and heatwaves of extreme weather?  A deadly serious question is posed in a quiet corner of the Houses of Parliament.  While the media fulminates in a flash storm conjured by David Cameron during Prime Ministers Questions, the Environmental Audit Select Committee contemplates a more fearful threat than Ed…

  • Malcolm Rifkind uncoiled and undone

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    Malcolm Rifkind sits on the sofa facing me. In his crisp shirt sleeves, he is the picture of casual composure, a study in carefully controlled ease nicely captured by the cameraman. And not a word out of place on the tape recording.