In defence of buddleja, blossom of the concrete jungle

I’ve been a city gardener all my working life. For years I’ve dug and pruned in the service of people and plants from everywhere. The countryside is lovely, but as nice as fields and woods are, my heart lies in the scrappy mass of hedges, trees and trampolines that we make when living 5,000 to a square kilometre.

London is where I learned to see plants for the first time, not just as bits of green background, but as identifiable things