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

  • Swanwatching at Pond Cottage

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    Phew! Great relief as mother swan appears round a bend in the stream with four cygnets in tow. We had an anxious half hour after arriving at Pond Cottage when only the dad and two young ones appeared at the bank to be fed. It’s not easy being surrogate swan parents!

  • Our excellent DIY Orient Express adventure

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    Why did we do it? There are quicker and easier ways to get from Edinburgh to Istanbul. You can fly direct from Edinburgh to Istanbul’s Ataturk airport in just about four and a half hours. But where’s the romance and adventure in that?

  • Borders of the mind: the great distraction of nationalism

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    Raindrops smear a blurry, bleary view of the Borders. I’m on the train, hurtling through what is still (so far) UK countryside, crossing the invisible line that divides Scotland from England. A red mist gathers as I flick through the Guardian, headlines on every page proclaiming why the independence referendum is (to me) such a…

  • Knock knock: who’s there?

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    No fear of sleeping in these mornings. By 8.30 there’s a lusty knocking on the bedroom wall, nothing personal you understand, just a purposeful hammering and banging, drilling and pounding. I’m not complaining. They are knocking the old house into new shape and it’s good to hear sounds of life next door again.

  • Poem of the week: 2 (Richard Ings)

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    Another Monday. Another Poem of the Week and by good chance  a brand new poetry book recently arrived in the post. Look out for Richard Ings.  His first collection, Occasional, is bursting with good things. Some wry, some sad, some playful, some serious, some simply beautiful.

  • Treading softly: Poem of the Week/Number One

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    Tread softly because you tread on my dreams Just over a month ago I posted a poem on Facebook for Valentines Day.  It wasn’t my poem and I had gone to no great trouble to seek it out, in fact I pinched Wendy Cope’s beautiful If We Were Never Going to Die off the front…

  • Is Edinburgh finding its feet at last?

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    The news went more or less unnoticed last November.  I heard it with some surprise but it sounded thoroughly good news to me. Edinburgh was preparing for a bold step towards becoming a modern city centre, a European city with a little more room for people and a little less room for cars. Since the…

  • Survival of the fittest at Pond Cottage

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      Sunday Sunset over the pond.  It’s around 5.30 pm, and I see from my handy weather app that we’ve gained more than an hour and a half of daylight since the beginning of January.  For some reason I always find the longer days of February bleaker than the twinkly darkness of midwinter.

  • The song is older than the sorrow

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    Breakfast on a wintry Edinburgh morning to the background melodies of South Uist.  I woke this morning with tunes from last night’s show dancing a jig in my head.  It’s a sign of a good performance when both the singer and the songs follow you home.

  • The ghost of Christmas present

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    Food banks are brimming with good will this Christmas. The Trussell Trust has delivered food parcels to 60,000 people in desperate need of help during the festive season. While the government resolutely denies that welfare reforms are causing a dramatic increase in food poverty, the Department for Work and Pensions admits that delays to benefits…

  • Poetry, politics and pedestrians

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    I’m walking home along Rose Street when writing on the wall catches my eye. Ron Butlin’s Recipe for Whisky. Perhaps not many people know it but this is the poem that launched Edinburgh’s Poetry Garden in St Andrew Square a full five years ago. It seems significant as I’ve just been to the Living Streets…

  • Nothing up my sleeve

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    At San Francisco airport we are offered a choice.  We can go through the bodyscanner or opt for a ‘thorough pat-down’.  Without giving it much thought we follow everyone else through the microwave. My man’s scan triggers an alarm which means waiting for a male security officer and a ‘pat-down in the soft parts’.