The importance of keeping a visual record of the garden over time is so conspicuously apparent, I can only wonder why for so long I’ve been indifferent to its practice…
Read moreDay 282: Virginia creeper
The problem with creepers is that, when growing well, they don’t so much creep, as lollop, haul, claim and conquer. All plants defy gravity to a greater or lesser extent in their aerial parts…
Read moreDay 281: a greenhouse for all
A glasshouse is a glorious thing. A greenhouse – which might be largely glass, but could just as well have windows of polycarbonate – is the next best thing, and there’s something rather wonderful about cramming them full of frost-tender plants at this time of year, a kind of fuggy Aladdin’s cave of barely-snoozing plant life…
Read moreDay 280: a tangle of twine
Simple pleasures, they say, are invariably the best, and if like me you’re no stranger to the joy occasioned by a new spool of garden twine, you’ll probably agree that they’re right…
Read moreDay 279: Japanese hydrangea vine
When is a hydrangea not a hydrangea? When it’s a Schizophragma integrifolium, of course…
Read moreDay 278: spider silk for breakfast
It’s that time of year when each early-morning excursion down the garden will inevitably result in a face full of spider silk. I’ve learnt to march with arm stretched in front of me…
Read moreDay 277: houseplants and heating
We’re so used to tracing the passage of the seasons by the signs we observe out of doors – what the trees or the leaves or the sky is doing…
Read moreDay 276: under cover
Day 275: Michaelmas daisy
Weeks of waiting are over, and the asters I was impatiently anticipating back in August (Day 224 Waiting for Asters) are bursting into flower…
Read moreDay 274: a saturation of watering cans
I’m wondering what would be the collective noun for watering cans. A splash? A sprinkle? A drizzle, or perhaps, a saturation of watering cans? I quite like the latter option…
Read moreDay 273: the Houseplant Festival
I’ve just been to a houseplant festival. It was billed in one of the London mags as one of the ten coolest things to do this weekend. But that’s not why I went…
Read moreDay 272: American pokeweed
I’m always a bit envious of gardens that have made room from American pokeweed (Phytolacca americana). It’s a great brute of a thing, six to eight feet high with thick green stems blushing to a kind of neon pink…
Read moreDay 271: the random raspberry
The raspberries are not very purposeful in my garden. I think one year they might have been – I’ve a vague memory of posts and lines and tying in…
Read moreThe Gardens, weeds & words podcast, Series 2 Episode 1
Town or country, we’re surrounded by nature, though we might often be too busy rushing about to notice. An increasingly well-documented phenomenon is the benefit to our mental and spiritual wellbeing that can accrue from an environment populated by living plants, and who better to talk about this with than Caro Langton, one half of botanical design and installation studio RoCo.
Read moreDay 270: frost chicken
The month is flying by, but it’s still September, and there’s time yet for things to ping in the beds. Just – at least when it comes to flowers…
Read moreDay 269: backlight
Backlight. It’s something that autumn does very well, particularly in the garden…
Read moreDay 268: Dahlia 'Otto's Thrill'
Thanks to the unfaltering efforts of plant breeders over the decades, there’s probably a dahlia to suit every personality. Even, it could be argued, those who can’t abide dahlias…
Read moreDay 267: autumn arrives
Autumn arrived yesterday, and with it, the rain, putting paid to any last remaining hopes of an Indian summer…
Read moreDay 266: Blue daisy bush
A blue daisy with a variegated leaf? Yes please. I love being introduced to new plants, and so it was with no small degree of delight that I found Felicia amelloides ‘Variegata’ …
Read moreDay 265: Rose 'Twice in a Blue Moon'
To give a rose a name like ‘Twice in a Blue Moon’ would seem to suggest that its flowers appear, if not hardly every, at least almost hardly ever. This is misleading…
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