The remaining borlotti will be sufficient for little more than a particularly diminutive casserole…
Read moreDay 275: Virginia creeper
Renegade vines clamber over the fence from next door, tangling with the buddleia and inveigling themselves into the lilacs…
Read moreDay 274: Rose 'Scepter'd Isle'
Things have taken a turn for the inclement over the past day or two…
Read moreDay 273: acanthus again
There’s a kind of harlequin thing going on with the acanthus right now…
Read moreDay 272: salad burnet
Raspberries on sticks. That’s the rather prosaic description that springs instantly to mind when I see a sanguisorba in flower…
Read moreDay 271: lipstick plant
Bright scarlet, tubular flowers are promised on the latest addition to the indoor jungle…
Read moreDay 270: deadhead or die
A friend asked me a few days ago when she should stop deadheading her plants…
Read moreDay 269: Persicaria amplexicaulis ‘Firetail’
If you don’t like a knotweed, you’d probably be a bit frustrated with the planting at Chelsea this year…
Read moreDay 268: meadow-rue
‘Airy’ is the word that springs to mind when thinking of meadow-rue in the garden…
Read moreDay 267: yellow coneflower
When it comes to yellow daisy-type flowers, there are more of them in the garden than you can shake a stick at….
Read moreDay 266: bog sage at Chelsea
Nothing bog standard about the show gardens at Chelsea Flower Show this year – bog sage, though, was popping up everywhere…
Read moreDay 265: flat-stalked spindle
If it’s too early in the year for you to read about autumn colour, you might want to skip today’s post…
Read moreDay 264: crocosmia rationalisation
The crocosmia always presents itself as a prime candidate for removal, splitting and rationalisation at this time of the year
Read moreDay 263: calico aster
I’ve yet to work out quite how asters get around a fairly reliable garden design principle…
Read moreDay 262: neon pothos
Opinion is divided in our house over the neon pothos (Epipremnum aureum ‘Neon’), a controversy second only to that which rages over the colour of the pot…
Read moreDay 261: making new wood
It doesn’t seem to matter how much I know about what happens when you cut a plant, or how many times I’ve carried it out…
Read moreDay 260: the last petunia
The last of the petunias, confirming that I’ll be winning no prizes either for deadheading or container watering this year…
Read moreDay 259: Panicum virgatum 'Warrior'
Of the many reasons to like a plant, its ability to make you smile should surely be close to the top…
Read moreDay 258: Cosmos
The garden’s beginning to take on the tired, satisfied air of one who’s run a hard race and now feels entirely deserving of a stretch, a rest, and a slap up fish supper…
Read moreDay 257: traveller’s joy
Among the many surprising relatives of the humble buttercup, traveller’s joy (Clematis vitalba) is probably one with few pretensions to grandeur…
Read more