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clearing the table and covering it in paper and coloured pencils, and Izzy’s dad’s huge collection of garden design books. He had flicked through these, carefully pointing out to Poppy where various gardens weredescribed as “inspired by” something.
    “Which is just a nice way of saying copied from. Well, no. Not exactly copied. You borrow a bit from their idea and twist it round and make it your own. Which is just what you did, Poppy, I promise.”
    He even had the same Cam Morris book as Poppy’s mum and he snorted disgustedly when Poppy showed it to him, looking at him worriedly to see if he thought she’d “borrowed” too much.
    “It’s nothing like yours!” he told her indignantly. “Do you know, I’m worried that Ali’s going to end up running the country one day. She seems to be able to twist all of you round her little finger.”
    “You know you wanted it to be more exciting?” Izzy said thoughtfully, leaning over Poppy’s shoulder.
    Poppy looked up at her hopefully.
    “In that video, Cam Morris talked about everybody being able to help in the garden, and get involved, and do stuff. I mean, there’s lots to look at, and smell, and touch, and it’s beautiful, but do you think it would help if there were things we could
do
?”
    Poppy nodded, frowning. “It would. What, though? I can’t think of anything…”
    “What about a weather station?” Izzy asked hopefully. She was really into science, and lovedexperiments. She had the biggest chemistry set Poppy had ever seen. “We could even build the instruments ourselves – I know a website. There’s a cool wind vane you can make out of old DVDs…”
    “None of my DVDs count as old,” her dad said quickly. “And actually, I’ve got another idea. I know you’ve got herbs in the garden for the Taste section, Poppy, but what about vegetables too? And fruit! You’ve got a lovely south-facing wall here, look. You could even have a peach tree growing up there!”
    “Do you think school would use the vegetables in our school lunches?” Poppy asked, her eyes widening hopefully.
    Izzy frowned. “We’d have to have ever such a lot for that. But if we grew salad, I bet that would be useful.”
    “It’s worth trying anyway,” her dad mused. “Growing your own’s a really interesting idea. Lots of schools are putting in gardens now. Since Jamie Oliver made all those TV programmes about how bad school meals were, schools are trying really hard with their lunches. Some nice fresh salad would be great. And I’m sure they could use your herbs too, Poppy. And you could try to grow everything organically.”
    Poppy nodded slowly. “I was thinking about that. It sounds good, not having any chemicals, but what if bugs just eat everything we plant? Mum tried to grow broad beans last year, and in the end she just pulled them up. They had these disgusting little black flies all over them. All over! They were covered.”
    Izzy’s dad sighed. “Tell me about it. It’s so difficult. I’ve started suggesting to people that they put ponds in their gardens if they want to grow fruit and veg and not spray them with anything.”
    Poppy wrinkled her nose and Izzy stared at her dad. “What good does a pond do?” she demanded.
    Poppy smiled down at her garden design. She was glad Izzy didn’t know either. She hadn’t felt like asking in case it made her sound stupid.
    “Frogs.” Izzy’s dad folded his arms and grinned at them. “Think about it.”
    “Oh!” Poppy looked up. “They eat the flies? Really? Does it make a difference?”
    “Well, it helps a bit. It’s still a problem though. You have to be really watchful and sneaky. Planting marigolds round your tomatoes, that sort of thing. Pests don’t like marigolds. Or basil! You can plant basil next to your tomatoes to keep flies off, and then you’ve got tomato and basil soup.” He beamed atthem, obviously thinking he was being very funny.
    Izzy rolled her eyes at him, but Poppy chewed her