Summer in the garden – confoundingly warm, days spent working in the flowerbeds a kind of blur, a skin prickling, water swigging hot mess of a gardener. The dahlias soak it all in…
Read moreDay 205: cool corners
I am not built for heat and so, while I work outside during much of the day, I arrange corners of the house to make me feel cool as soon as I get back in…
Read moreThe Gardens, weeds & words podcast, Series 1 Episode 13
“Ask a busy person”, they say, if you want something done. And since I wanted to talk about how our gardens join together to form something more than the sum of their parts, who better to ask than garden designer Jo Thompson, whose Springwatch garden at the RHS Hampton Court Garden Festival was a celebration of just that.
Read moreDay 204: Achillea ptarmica ‘The Pearl’
With Achillea ptarmica ‘The Pearl’ planted only a few feet away from Helenium ‘Moerheim Beauty’, I realise I have sneezewort and sneezeweed in the same border. I may have to rechristen it the Snuff Bed…
Read moreDay 203: oak leaved hydrangea
The oak leaved hydrangea (Hydrangea quercifolia) is not a plant that shrinks into the background. Autumn is really when it comes into its own as each large leaf takes on rich, burnished tones, but in summer it’s no slouch…
Read moreDay 202: scarlet cinquefoil
You’ll no doubt have noticed that some flowers close up for the night. I wasn’t aware that cinquefoils had this habit until I wandered into the garden to take a portrait of Potentilla thurberi ‘Monarch’s Velvet’…
Read moreDay 201: polkadot begonia
Day 200: perennial pea
“What’s the point of a sweet pea that doesn’t smell?”, people ask. Unless you’re blessed with a slug-free garden where you can sow directly into the soil, raising a sweet pea from seed is a bit of a faff without the reward of their delicious perfume.
Read moreDay 199: Aralia cordata 'Sun King'
Some people love a zingy flower clash, all bright colours and an irreverent disregard of harmony. Others prefer their interest to be generated from the contrast between foliage forms…
Read moreDay 198: evening sun
A certain insouciance begins to infiltrate our garden at this point of the year. It’s as if some plants suddenly decide to let themselves go…
Read moreDay 197: Althaea cannabina
The latter half of July should, if the weather’s behaving itself, bring blue skies and Althaea cannabina to my garden…
Read moreDay 196: stellar pelargoniums
Of all the pelargoniums, the stellars are among my favourite to grow…
Read moreDay 195: bear’s breeches
My acanthus is flowering. Not prolifically, but noticeably, two flower spikes held aloft, towers of purple and white flowers in that characteristic arrangement that gives the plant its common name…
Read moreDay 194: the remontant rose
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Read moreDay 193: rice-paper plant
If you’d suggested to me ten years ago that I’d develop a hankering for plants that create a tropical atmosphere, I’d have choked on my cucumber sandwich and told you to toddle off down my lavender-lined path…
Read moreDay 192: ox-eye daisy
I’m fairly certain I’ve never yet met an ox, let alone looked one in the eye, but it always occurred to me that a more appropriate common name for the Leucanthemum vulgare would be the “fried-egg daisy”…
Read moreDay 191: Geranium 'Claridge Druce'
My fondness for hardy geraniums is a matter of record – beautiful, hard to kill, versatile, and great for pollinators. Pink flowered Geranium x oxonianum ‘Claridge Druce’ is a particularly bomb-proof variety…
Read moreThe Naturecraft Garden
At this years RHS Hampton Court Flower Show, I resolved to do things a little differently. No galloping all over trying to see everything, but a more measured pace, and a closer look at a smaller selection. One garden that I’ve been looking forward to seeing for months was Pollyanna Wilkinson’s Naturecraft Garden.
Read moreDay 190: sneezeweed
There are several things in the garden that make me sneeze at this time of year, but helenium, or sneezeweed, isn’t one of them…
Read moreDay 189: lemon catnip
It’s taken me years to appreciate nepeta. Perhaps, as with our feline friends, catnip doesn’t quite get us all in the same way…
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