As close to a bulb lasagne as I’ll probably ever get – I think my brain can cope with disinterring the earthly remains of scilla and sorting them out…
Read moreDay 64: not so cheesy
When is a swiss cheese plant not a swiss cheese plant? When it’s a Raphidophora tetrasperma. Sold under a bewildering number of names…
Read moreDay 63: car park plants
Photinia x fraseri ‘Red Robin’, just readying itself for its first trick of the year, is not a plant to everyone’s taste. For one thing, it’s exceedingly popular…
Read moreDay 62: artichokes
The cutting down of the artichokes is a milestone event here. As tall as their near relative, the cardoon, this particularly variety throws up stems over six foot tall…
Read moreDay 61: spurge alien
There’s a week or so before the spurge flowers, when it hunches over against the bitter March winds that billow through the garden, long leaves overlapped like armour plates, protectively shielding the flowering bracts…
Read moreDay 60: winter work
Now that we can officially declare that winter is over – I'm not quite sure that I would, though, notwithstanding the backing of meteorologists everywhere…
Read moreDay 59: nemesis
I mentioned a few days back that, contrary to my better judgement, we would soon be welcoming another maidenhair fern into our home. She’s arrived…
Read moreDay 58: winning the war
I am winning the war against couch grass. Scourge of many an allotment plot, it once romped unchallenged across the vegetable garden here, but no longer cuts quite such an impressive figure…
Read moreDay 57: hori hori
I think I’m slightly terrified of my hori hori. There’s no doubting that it’s an effective and hugely versatile gardening tool, but...just look at the thing…
Read moreDay 56: false spring
A run of dry weather, a glimpse of the sun two days running, and everyone’s talking about a false spring. Irrespective of winter being over at the end of the week – by the meteorological measure at least – I think this says more about our collectively fragile state of mind…
Read moreDay 55: aide memoire
Some gardeners are blessed with brilliant memories. For the rest of us, there’s labelling, as long as we remember to carry this out with assiduity…
Read moreDay 54: messy but marvellous
I have a theory that, when it comes to bitty looking borders, it’s early spring bulbs that have the potential to contribute the greatest degree of uncoordinated visual noise to the garden…
Read moreDay 53: Faith, hope…
Today the sun shone, and a person could be forgiven for having entertained a belief in the imminent arrival of spring. The ground is beginning to dry…
Read moreDay 52: new recruits
I’m starting to take an inventory of the houseplants – what’s looking good, what’s looking less than happy after a gloomy winter getting frazzled by the central heating…
Read moreDay 51: tipping the scales
What a difference a week makes. From snow and sub-zero temperatures to much milder fare, with a little sunshine thrown in for good measure…
Read moreDay 50: head gardeners
We’re all head gardeners at home. We get to make the decisions, manage the budget, hand out tasks to the under-gardeners, though we rarely have a staff and volunteers to manage…
Read moreDay 49: all strung out
Imagine the shame of running out of twine on the job. I mean – it shouldn’t happen to a gardener, but last week, in the middle of training a rose against the garage wall, it did…
Read moreDay 48: scarlet willow
It’s helpful to hold a mental image of what you want to achieve at the forefront of your mind, the better to get you through the slogging stages. The fiery stems of pollarded scarlet willow shining brightly in the winter sun…
Read moreDay 47: a mudsome thaw
Thaw day – the snow has been and gone, the snow drops are in various states of disarray – the single species stubbornly buttoned up …
Read moreDay 46: tough love
Treat ’em mean, keep ’em keen. As a phrase, it’s probably not going to top the list of the most useful gardening aphorisms, but it certainly seems to work in certain cases…
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