Diarmuid Gavin's gardening stories: Prospect Cottage garden

This week Diarmuid Gavin tells us the history of Derek Jarman’s garden Prospect Cottage. Derek Jarman was never a man to follow convention. A filmmaker, artist, writer, and activist, his life was one of relentless creativity and defiance. his artistic journey took an unexpected turn when he found himself on the windswept shingle of Dungeness, a desolate landscape on the Kent coast, dominated by a looming nuclear power station and battered by salt-laden winds. Most people would have seen it as barren, inhospitable. Jarman saw possibility. When he overheard talk of a small black fisherman’s cottage for sale, he bought it on impulse and named it Prospect Cottage