Blog

Back on the 4th April, I gave a quick run down on my latest bit of trial planting of very low plants.  I almost gave up on it in early spring, when it looked like being overrun with weeds, and I star ...

I planted as I built my stone wall, following good Gertrude Jekyll principles. Some things succeeded and other things failed.  Some, like the honeysuckle and the dianthus, grew really well initially, ...

Well-planted pots can pack a punch totally disproportionate to the number and volume of plants involved. A couple of times a year I replant the largest of my pots, which then sit in prominent position ...

I’ve never found the space, or more correctly, the context, for small stuff in my garden. I’d much prefer to be swallowed up in plants, than tiptoe over a carpet of them.  But over the years I’ ...

Just back again from the deliciously juicy, turgid gardens of Marlborough, NZ, and while I’ve been ranting about the joys and the unrealized potential of dry gardening for years, I still find that I ...

I was making a hasty departure from Longwood a few weeks back, and with no time to take a proper look at the excellent shop near the exit, snatched up a book on meadows near the door.  After a very q ...

There’s this thing going on the The States at the moment, where they stick their pots of annuals and perennials full of….well…sticks.  It may well be happening elsewhere, but its been a while s ...

For several totally disconnected reasons I’m back in the zone of thinking about plant-driven gardens vs design-driven gardens.  If you were here, I wouldn’t be able to resist telling you each of ...

Give a perfectionist a pile of rough old walling stone and a straight string line, and watch him squirm. A little over a week ago I took delivery of just such a pile of stone.  I’ve been dreaming o ...

Most plants present their floral colour in a way that is irritatingly, or at least disappointingly, diffuse.  This is never more obvious than when you take a photo of a plant or combination of plants ...

One of the really big questions is how much garden space should be allocated to good, reliable plant matrix, and how much to seasonal, colourful, ephemeral blast.  It’s sort of the same as when you ...

I’m totally thrown by tropical gardens, or at least by tropical plants.  I can’t shake the conviction that, given a tropical climate, I wouldn’t have a clue how to use them effectively together ...