For far too long I’ve been scuffing up the surface of the dining table with my houseplant fettling. It’s not the best recipe for domestic harmony…
Read moreDay 73: reinforcements
A small army of herbaceous cuttings is filling out on the greenhouse staging, having put on a burst of growth in the last week…
Read moreDay 72: cherry plum
Hot on the tails of its cousin, the purple leaved plum (Prunus cerrasifera 'Pissardii’, Day 60), the cherry plum has burst into flower…
Read moreDay 71: goat willow chic
The goat willow (Salix caprea) is bang on trend for Spring/Summer 2021. Every year the people at Pantone name the colour that will be dominating these industries for the next twelve months…
Read moreDay 70: snowdrop hangover
It occurred to me today, as I snuck up on a clump that looked particularly ripe for dividing, that there’s no plant that, once flowered, looks quite so morning-after-the-night-before as the snowdrop…
Read moreDay 69: the tale of the bent spade
It’s been some years since I broke a spade – or a fork for that matter. Time was when I’d use the things in the most inappropriate fashion…
Read moreDay 68: paeony promises
The paeonies have moved into stage two of their above-ground existence; fat, sharply pointed buds transformed in the space of a few days into bloody hands clasped in prayer…
Read moreDay 67: feed me, Seymour
Unlike the plants in our flower beds, those things we grow in containers are entirely reliant upon us for their nutritional requirements…
Read moreDay 66: jumping the gun
I’d imagined my tulips would emerge with grace and synchronicity, a kind of slow-motion dance of reaching and unfurling, something beautiful to behold each day as winter steadily hands over to spring…
Read moreDay 65: lazy lasagne
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 more