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

  • Putting HER story up in lights

    Putting HER story up in lights

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    My tea is nearly ready and the sun has left the sky; It’s time to take the window to see Leerie going by; Robert Louis Stevenson: The Lamplighter My daily walk was later than usual. After five o’clock in January the skies are dark and pavements less inviting.  This is Leerie Lamplighter time in Edinburgh…

  • That jiggery-pokery thing called life: poem for the new year

    That jiggery-pokery thing called life: poem for the new year

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    At first I find it hard to choose a poem from Judi Benson’s, Hole in the Wall.  She became Writer in Residence at Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary just a year after the death of her husband, Ken Smith, and there are lines in this book which I find painful to read.

  • Failing boys at school, failing society

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    The education system is failing white working class boys. It’s not news and it’s not peculiar to the UK – different studies across the wider world have been saying it in academic language for a long time. But Angela Rayner, the shadow education secretary, made new headlines with her clearly expressed views this week.

  • Weaving a magic spell against Brexit borders

    Weaving a magic spell against Brexit borders

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    Weaving with dogwood feels like satin flowing through your fingers: soft, supple, satisfying. What’s more, concentrating on rhythm and shape leaves very little time for thinking about Brexit. Or mind-numbing border politics.

  • In a state of ambiguity

    In a state of ambiguity

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    Neither one thing nor another. Travelling through Europe for the first on my new Irish passport, I fear the callous carelessness of hard Brexiteers and their crude threat to an essential state of ambiguity: ‘neither simply Irish nor simply British’

  • Turning leaves of the Poetry Tree

    Turning leaves of the Poetry Tree

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    ‘And so, let’s pause a moment here, draw strength – and reclaim what is ours.’ Reclaiming St Andrew Square Ron Butlin Green, gold, gone. Any day soon the leaves will turn and fall. And in a shady corner of Edinburgh’s St Andrew Square a young tree will reflect the colour of its relatives on distant mountains…

  • Shame the devil, tell the truth

    Shame the devil, tell the truth

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    How history twists and turns. The at times black comedy tour, first improvised by comedians Jamie MacDonald and Harry Gooch six years ago, acquires newly topical significance at the finale in St Andrew Square. (Disclaimer: I’m a director of Walking Heads but there are many true words among the jests so I’m reblogging the story…

  • Silent greetings from Mars

    Silent greetings from Mars

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    Women may be from Venus but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy the occasional trip to Mars. On a dreary, rain-smeared midsummer night, I land on a sociable planet light years away from Brexit Britain, and find the perfect holiday poem for my husband.

  • SAY Award: so Paisley 2021

    SAY Award: so Paisley 2021

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    The Gender Neutral Toilets are warmly welcomed by ‘trans queer’ punk band Spook School though I tiptoe back out to the old school Ladies after encountering a row of urinals. ‘Hello World, welcome to Paisley,’ the smiling face of Paisley2021’s Jean Cameron beams a global greeting from the SAY award screen streamed live from Paisley…

  • Summer of love revisited in the shadow of Brexit

    Summer of love revisited in the shadow of Brexit

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    Ah, the summer of love. From this long distance it seems an age of rosy innocence. Then the 1967 timeline recollects the startling reality. What a year it was! To a soundtrack of the Beatles, a newsfeed of race riots across the US, death dropped daily on Vietnam. Somehow I just lost fifty years. Where did…

  • Seeding success: a new Paisley pattern

    Seeding success: a new Paisley pattern

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    Tread softly on the way to Paisley Town Hall; it’s a journey threaded with names of the stuff that made a great civic centre. Here’s Gauze Street crossing the canal. Turn right at Abbey Place just before the road divides between Lawn Street and Cotton Street. And pause.

  • The cost of dignity

    The cost of dignity

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    It should be incredible but it’s only too believable in the dysfunctional state we are in. Headlines in the news stir a moment of dislocation. Where exactly are we? What year is this?