I recently found this picture of Alf Evans. He was the man who fired my enthusiam for Meconopsis and peat garden plants. In 1974 he wrote the 'Peat Garden and its Plants'. He ultimately was in charge of the peat beds at the Royal Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh. Years later he visited my wife's and my garden in Kingsbarns when leading a tour of Japanese people round Scottish gardens. By a strange co-incidence we both started out careers in the same place - Queens College Dundee - then a part of St. Andrews University. He studied horticulture there before the second world war and after wartime service in the Royal Airforce joined the staff at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh and eventually ran the alpine , rockery and peat gardens with his real love the last. This visit inspired me to buy 40 tons of peat tailings (easily available from west Fife in those days) and start a peat garden of my own. I now maintain this garden with deep annual dressings of homemade leaf mould