The tulips are just about done, ‘Black Parrot’ being one of the last to open. It seems a fitting variety with which to say goodbye…
Read moreDay 129: camassias
May is camassia time, and if you’re lucky enough to live near a garden where they’ve been planted en masse, you’re in for a treat…
Read moreDay 128: raising stakes
The first couple of weeks of May are just about your last proper chance of getting stakes into your flower beds in order to prevent top-heavy herbaceous plants from flopping about…
Read moreDay 127: floral confetti
The May bank holiday arrives, and even the trees join in the celebrations, strewing their petals across the ground to provide a glorious carpet on which to tread…
Read moreDay 126: Tulip 'Queen of Night'
Just as you start to worry that the tulips have had it, Queen of Night appears, reliably in time for the May bank holiday…
Read moreDay 125: green alkanet
What’s green, blue, and hairy, and probably all over your garden right now? Green alkanet, that’s what, or Pentaglottis sempervirens to give it its full name…
Read moreDay 124: petrichor
I hear the rain before I see it, look up to see its glinting edge drawn across the width of the garden, gaining ground…
Read moreDay 123: considered disorder
There’s a little corner in the gardens at Penshurst Place that a casual observer might be forgiven for thinking had been overlooked by the gardeners…
Read moreDay 122: Tulip 'Brownie'
There are double tulips...and then there’s ‘Brownie’. Officially, it’s a paeony-flowered variety, though it’s far more orange than any paeony I know…
Read moreDay 121: scent of wisteria
It was years before I realised the flowers of wisteria were highly scented. I’m sure I thought the plant already gave enough…
Read moreDay 120: apple blossom
April turns to May, and leaves a parting gift of apple blossom
Read moreDay 119: Geranium phaeum
Geranium phaeum is a delightful plant with a host of rather sombre common names – dusky cranesbill, mourning widow, or black widow…
Read moreDay 118: garlic mustard
Few plants grow with such a vibrant, verdant energy as garlic mustard, or Jack in the Hedge (Alliaria petiolata) in spring…
Read moreDay 117: tulip fire
The closest I want to get to fire in my tulips are the bold markings on the fabulous petals of the viridiflora variety, ‘Flaming Spring Green’ …
Read moreDay 116: bluebell woods
There’s enough going on in the world today to make any self-respecting human more than a little uncomfortable about proclaiming the superiority of the native English bluebell…
Read moreDay 115: shuttlecock fern
Some ferns lend their lush greenery to the garden all year round, while others will deprive you of their company over winter. This latter group appear with many a languid gesture throughout spring, in the full knowledge that we’re looking upon the unveiling ceremony with wrapt admiration…
Read moreDay 114: forget-me-nots and tulips
Forget-me-nots (Myosotis sylvatica) must rank high on the list of glorious self-seeders of which the over-zealous garden tidier might inadvertently deprive themselves…
Read moreDay 113: old brick and yew
I want to take one last look at some of the details and textures that help to create the underlying structure in our gardens, before they disappear under a froth of exuberant flowers and foliage from now till November…
Read moreDay 112: honesty
The cabbage family must be a good-natured clan. Have you noticed that so many of their flowers seem to have twinkly little eyes, set among a profusion of laughter lines?
Read moreDay 111: dog's mercury
This is Dog’s mercury (Mercurialis perennis). Fond of shady glades, it appears in early spring often in the company of new hellebore leaves, which it attempts rather sneakily to mimic…
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