IN TERMS of hard acts to follow, Mark Pitman's is a doozie. But here yesterday he took a decisive step away from being son of Jenny when his charge Ever Blessed won the Hennessy Gold Cup. The seven-year-old gelding is blessed with an excess of talent, but is difficult to keep sound and Pitman deserves every credit for producing him in perfect nick on the big day.

NEWS FROM THE GARDENERS' WORLD

THE PERENNIAL story of the working man and the full-time mother swapping jobs ("How my other half lives", Real Life, 12 September) is monotonously familiar to readers of women's magazines. The comic picture of the man in a pinny with his monumental inability to perform the most basic of domestic tasks is always complemented by the woman's innate ability to do the same, and to breeze through a middle-class man's job that would normally require substantial training.

Stately in the shade, dramatic when backlit, and enchanting when covered in glassy beads of rain, grasses not only provide sculptural focal points in the garden, but also make useful windbreaks and ground cover. Sarah Raven reports

Steven and I have been friends for a long time. We met in the mid-1980s in New York; we were both expat Glaswegians with young families - my son was born in Manhattan - and both at interesting points in our careers at that time, and we bonded quite strongly. I feel closer to him than I do to most film-makers - I don't want to sound pretentious, but we relate as artists. If I'm talking to other film-makers, I'll end up talking about practical things, fees, budgets; but with Steven we can cut straight through to the fundamentals, the perennials, the universals.

In the final part of her series on creating your own cutting garden, Sarah Raven suggests some half-hardy annuals, biennials and hardy perennials that will provide scent, colour and the perfect foliage base for next year's flower arrangements

BRUCE COCKBURN HQ DUBLIN

RICHARD BRANSON'S guise as a perennial student rebounded at JFK when the pilot announced that, with more passengers than expected, take- off would be delayed while extra fuel was put in: this recalls undergraduate whip-rounds to get a clapped-out Ford Anglia to the pub and back - and was duly reinforced by the blow-out of an engine over Boston and a long night on the tarmac.

I have a Gardena sprinkler which keeps getting jammed so that it only waters one section of its potential arc. If this happens, soak the sprinkler in a sink of water to displace any grit or soil and pour some oil over any moving parts

Successful weeding depends on knowing where and when to strike, and doing it with conviction. By Ursula Buchan

Sir: May I suggest that it is now time for us to acknowledge that the era of hanging baskets is coming to an end ("A hanging offence", 12 June)?

Garden varieties of the linen plant, a firm favourite with Ursula Buchan, come in many colours and, massed, create a beautiful summer spread

GREAT BRITAIN won the first round of the FISA World Cup here with the men's four and the women's pair notching victories, while two other crews won silvers and one a bronze.

The Kiwi cousin of the Bitter Cress weed is threatening to strangle our gardens. Ursula Buchan offers advice on how to identify and eradicate this deadly plant