1. Rumours of a garden centre to be built at Buckingham Palace.

2. Spotted: Jim Broadbent at Almeida theatre watching Rope. Lisa Snowdon on the phone in Piccadilly. Alan Titchmarsh and Lawrence Llewellyn-Bowen at B&Q launch. Spoke to Titch on working with B&Q. Wonder what BBC thinks? Titch is back at Gardeners’ World Live. He’s filming for BBC this summer. Might write a book about him.

3. Vinnie Jones from Celeb Big brother spends £2,000 a week on a gardener and other home helps.

4. look-alikes special Paul Pleydell: Shakespeare, Richard O’Brien, Bill Bailey, orc, Terry Nutkins.

Dan Thurlow: Neil Lennon, Prince Harry, Alex McLeish.

Jonathan Porritt: Michael McIntyre.

5. I was at the enjoyable GCA conference this week but they asked me not to blog about it. But I will mention massaging Andrew Evans’ shoulders from Ruxley Manor garden centre.

6. Was at London College of Garden Design first anniversary event at Regents Park College last week. Spoke to Annabel Downs, Mark Gregory, AFT, Andrew Wilson, Joanna Fortnam, Sam Martin etc. Theme for Chelsea-pizza ovens in gardens.  Oh yeah, and Stephen Lacey talking about standing as next RHS president on a ticket of buying an RHS yacht. LCGD exhibition 8-11 July at London Design Centre in Islington.

7. Crosswords cost five times as much for cryptics than general-£20 to £100.

8. Went to Wisley last week. Saw Jim Gardiner and Hayley Monckton. One bit that got cut out of my interview was that On the horizon are Robert Myers' rose garden, which runs down in terraces from the 1960s Bowes Lyon pavilion. Growers Harkness and Austin are advising on which roses to plant. Gardiner says the gardens, paid for by Witan Investments, will have much in place by next winter. They will include a structure of yew and Gardiner's beloved magnolia, and paths made from Bradstone stone, rather than Chelsea 2007-09 sponsor Marshalls'.
Gardiner says: "Why should the RHS be associated with Marshalls all the time? We have to support the landscape industry and we felt Bradstone was the most appropriate product for the design."

I’ve had 28 emails from Gary Dunlop this week. All interesting though.

9. A Christopher Lloyd exhibition opens at Garden Museum on 1 April. In October this column questioned Lloyd’s legacy. Was he over-rated?

Going to the Titchmarsh/Penelope Keith event next month at the museum.Unmissable.

10. Also been to Haskins and Blue Diamond in Spalding this week. Lots of people in the cafes. Do garden centres do catering better than they do the other stuff? The GCA conference scores suggested so.

11. Alys Fowler’s chickens are called Alice B Toklas and Gertrude. Her dog is called Isabel. Win a copy of her new book The Edible garden if you can tell me who Alice B Toklas is.

12. Best sellers in garden centres-steak, pie, fish and chips, fish, chicken, lamb, curry, lasagne, roast, scampi. Most profitable-pie, fish, chicken, lasagne, steak, sandwiches, fish and chips, sausages, burger, lamb, omelette.

13. Retail guru close the deal coach Alf Dunbar mantra: “Is there anything else you need today?” Tony Kendle from the Eden Project said next year’s Big Lunch on 19 July could involve the 4m people who said they wished they’d eaten as a community this year.

14. Duty log mental:

#Is this article and the majority of comments for real?

Is being 'toothless', unshaven' and/or 'cockney' some kind of crime? The gentleman concerned sounds like the hero of the episode.

You all need to think about Haiti and have a long hard look at yourselves.

#If you've never listened to Arlo Guthrie's 'Alice's Restaurant' re littering with your address intact please do!

#Mattew, a bit out of order in my opinion.

1. At Defra’s new year journalist reception on Tuesday I first talked to a couple of senior Defra public relations bods. They noted that I had blogged about their distaste for badgers after a similar event last summer. I smoothly said: “Nice to see I’m read.” They were less indiscreet this time and would not comment on how floods had ruined loads of Cumbrians’ lives because of Defra intransigence, choosing to change the subject to talk about Hezza and his garden.

2. A bit later I saw the Horse and Hound type who I accused of boring Defra minister Jim Fitzpatrick about horsebox legislation last year. I hid and she left to go to a prior en-neigh-gment. Fitz didn't show this year but Hilary Benn weirdly seems to relish well-oiled farming hacks asking him why he's at Defra when he doesn't like the countryside, is vegetarian etc. 

3. Legendary Guradin hack Simon Hoggart was there. He clocked my name tag and sniffed before taking more notes about the food on offer. Look out for “gvt waste” piece. His Christmas round robin letters book is a classic. He's not Simon Jenkins btw. They are different people, though a bit similar.

4. As well as British wine, there was fish. I said the writer of the film End of the Line (which portrays doomsday fishing stock scenarios) Charles Clover that joined up thinking on fish was required and the Government should be telling Jamie Oliver to start a campaign saying ‘eat less fish’. All TV chefs and nutritionists ram fish down your throat at all times. Hence no fish in the sea. No-one took any notice of my simplistic view.

5. Talking of wine, the Barclay brothers Daily Telegraph owners are going to make a Sark vintage, I heard. Then saw in the paper today. http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jan/13/barclay-brothers-sark-wine

6. Spoke to Defra minister Huw Irranca-Davies on the issue of United Utilities over-filling the Thirlmere reservoir near Keswick in Cumbria and then not allowing any more water in during floods. He said something on it has landed on his desk. I said Keswick flooded five years ago, with the same problem, the water company wanting to keep the lake full in case of future drought, fingered as being to blame. He said he’d have a look. I’d used the line: “As a punter rather than a hack.” (I'm from Keswick). HID told a long story about an elderly Keswickian who had used plants on his doorstep to stem the worst of the flood and with his nephew had lifted his furniture onto blocks and taken the carpet up in a finger in the *** style King Canute gesture. Meanwhile a neighbour had simply locked the door when the flood came and checked into a hotel. This soggy tale suggested looking after yourself may be the best policy when the floods come again, probably in about two years judging by their  increasing frequency-1985, 2005, 2009.

8. APG secretary Brian Donohoe is organising a John Cushnie memorial edition of GQT to be held in the House of Commons. RHS is new sponsor. Stephen Bennett said, unprompted, he had my blog in his bag, ready to read on the hoof.

Twitter at mattapple1

Blog at Telegraph 

1. Happy New Year. Or HNY as I say to save time. 263 people have said Happy New Year to me so far this year. Is this about right? 453 said Merry Christmas. I said Merry Xmas to save time. And have a cool yule to be a t##t.

2. Xmas TV: Victoria Wood special: Duncan Preston: “My life seems completely grey, bleak and pointless.”
Julie Walters: “Sometimes it's God's way of getting you to enjoy Gardener's World.”
 
3. Look-alikes special.You do the matching.

Richard E Grant and James Alexander Sinclair

Hayley Monckton and Ali Bastian

Leigh Hunt and Corpse bride

Ben Fogle and Christian Jessen

4. Glee trade show for garden centres in September has a logo that is a tiny bit like new E4 US TV hit Glee. The title track of Glee is Journey’s Don’t stop believing. That little Joe McElderry sang on X Factor.

5. Sad to hear of the death of John Cushnie, the only Gardeners Question Time panellist with industry landscaping experience. He predicted in Daily Telegraph 2 January he would ask more gardeners to grow posh veg. There are no immediate plans to replace him at Gardeners’ Question Time. A tribute edition is on Radio 4 on 15 January at 3pm repeated on 17 January at 2pm.

6. Charlie Dimmock is to strip off and appear in full bloom at the Princess Theatre in a touring production of Calendar Girls.

The bra-less presenter, who found fame through BBC gardening show Groundforce, has been receiving acting tuition and vocal coaching in preparation for her stage debut.

She will play Celia, the more curvaceous member of the Women's Institute featured in the show.

It's a role previously played by Jerry Hall, and Kelly Brook now has the part in the West End production running at the Noel Coward Theatre.

In Torquay the production will run from July 5 to 10 and will form one of the linchpins of the venue's summer season.

Her fellow cast members will include Gemma Craven, Sue Holderness and former EastEnders stars Hannah Waterman and Letitia Dean as the women from the Rylstone and District WI who laid the foundations of an extraordinary charitable enterprise when they disrobed and posed naked for a racy calendar.

Tickets go on sale in mid January.

7. Ian Mcmillan-Yorkshire Post

I have a shelf full of chutney standing there like skittles in a bowling alley, and it'll probably last me for most of 2010, but the burning question is: "What on earth will I do now in garden centres?"
You see, despite my best efforts over the decades, I've never really enjoyed my many visits to garden centres. My lovely wife is a big fan
of gardening and, for her, a visit to a garden centre is the equivalent
of an art lover visiting the National Gallery or a train spotter catching a glimpse of something rare and steamy chugging through
Doncaster station.
It's bliss for her. She's in Garden Heaven, where the angels sit on water features and their harps are made of canes and twine. For me, on the other hand, it's not quite that exciting. My lovely wife looks at a plant. She doesn't like it. She looks at another plant which to me looks exactly like the previous plant but she declares this to be superior in every possible way.
It's her hobby so I don't mind but I always say, at this point, "I'm just off to look at the chutney" and I spend many happy minutes gazing at Farmhouse Chutney or Mango Chutney or Tomato and Cucumber Chutney. I take it from the shelf: like a version of a wine expert, I hold the jar up to the light and see the rays of the sun filtered through the chutney. I read the ingredients aloud and they sound like a little poem. Then, just to keep the economy going in a recession, I always buy some.

8. I have boring Facebook friends-all on about the cold, their cats and their babies. My baby is well wrapped up for the snow thankfully. Twitter is better. FisherTomlin Wondered where all the snowmen went? http://post.ly/HOaS

I also learnt compost worms don’t eat when bedding is below 3 degrees from Wiggly Wigglers.

9. Anna Pavord in the Independent mag says: “Websites and blogs have multiplied, fertilised by a curious anxiety about the natural world. But that world is not going to get more familiar by way of a computer screen.” She recommends getting out into the garden rather than wittering on about it.

10. Garden centre consultant Eve Tigwell quiz:

What kind of pie is traditionally eaten on Thanksgiving Day in America?

What is also known as a Love-Apple?

What kind of fruit is a Muscat? 

What is the alternative name for a Chinese Gooseberry?           

What fruit is the main ingredient of Eve’s Pudding?

What is a Huckleberry?

Which of these is not a vegetable?

Cabbage: Cucumber: Cauliflower

Which drink is flavoured with juniper berries?

A Savoy is a variety if which vegetable?

Which member of the onion family is said to repel vampires?

Answers

Pumpkin

Tomato

Grape

Kiwi Fruit

Apple

Blueberry

Cucumber

Gin

Cabbage

Garlic