THE TIMES
Date: 10th July 1999
Article by Jane Owen
Singer-songwriter Beverley Craven has planted a tree for each of her children in her south-facing garden, which overlooks a swathe of oak, poplar and sycamore. For Mollie, seven, who will accompany her mother on one of her Scottish tour dates, there's a flowering cherry; Brenna, four, has a whitebeam; and two-and-a-half-year-old Connie has what I think is an amelanchier. Craven doesn't know the names - she chose them for their looks at a local garden centre.
The trees flourish behind their large, airy Edwardian house with its woodland view - although we are only a short hop on the Underground from Piccadilly Circus.
Craven and her husband Colin Campsie - who was lead singer of The Quick - have lived here three years.
She planted most of the garden herself, and maintains it without outside help - on top of having three small children, doing all the housework, and recording and producing her latest album, Mixed Emotions, which has just reached the Top 40.
"When we arrived here four years ago, there were tram- lines of concrete marking straight beds. I took them out and made these," says Craven, waving at the serpentine beds on either side of the lawn scattered with children's toys. A scarlet bed of cordyline, dianthus, roses, hardy geranium and fuchsias was inspired by a television programme that recommended reds in the bed - although Craven was brought up by gardening parents who cultivated five acres, including a fruit and vegetable garden.
"I would love to have a vegetable garden here, but I don't know how I could manage it," says Craven.
The garden is not unproductive though - she has bought the children a vegetable garden kit of lettuce, carrot, courgette and chives, sprouting in seed trays on the steps. Established greengage, damson, eating and cooking apples give a taste of the good life.
"I have made lots of apple pies and damson jam," she says.
Campsie built spiralling steps to link house to garden, matching the curve of the Dutch gable. They lead on to a terrace with sun umbrella, pots of sweet pea, and a bay tree that Craven binned when it died, only to see it sprouting back indignantly.
The gardening pest is Connie, who has just plucked all the buds off the lilies and the flowers from the Tropaeolum polyphyllum, which curls around a trellis arch between flower garden and the less formal wooded end, where there are swings and a trampoline. A friend's dog has just destroyed two large bushes of the silver-leaved Convolvulus boissieri.
"This is a family garden. Friends come with their children and they all pile straight outside. We have a buffet in the kitchen and get the barbecue going - everybody eats off their laps."
The professional entertaining is kept away from family and friends at the top of the house, where Craven and Campsie have built a 32-track digital studio. The 7ft Yamaha grand piano cost £13,000, and was so big it had to be swung through the window by crane.
The garden is therapy for Craven - she mows and prunes and plants away her cares - rather than baring them as inspiration for her work, which comes entirely from her life as wife and mother. It's a long way from the songs of angst and adversity which launched her career.
Her dream would be to have more children - and a dog.
"I will have one [a dog] at the end of this tour. That is the light at the end of the tunnel," she says.
