Whenever people visit my garden, without fail the most asked-after plant is the Marlborough rock daisy (Pachystegia insignis). The Marlborough rock daisy is exactly what it says on the tin. It’s a ...
You’ve really got to love a shrub or climber that waits until now to do something really big, blousy and generous. There’s not that many of them. Most that flower now have been doing their thi ...
What a great plant. Despite being stuck with a tongue-twister of a Latin name – Beschorneria septentrionalis is year-round one of the neatest, most reliable foliage plants in my garden. Its mid-gree ...
Last week I spent a few days in and around Adelaide. There were some gardens there that I needed to see. I’d been aware of Kurt Wilkinson’s garden, Brenton Robert’s garden and Sarah Budarick ...
I can’t tell you how grateful I am, right now, to Verbena rigida. And what I used to find most annoying about it is now the very thing I’m most grateful for. It has been described as a miniature ...
I’m into maximum seasonal change in my garden. One of the hardest times to achieve that, given that I can’t water the garden at all, is mid to late summer. Nearly everything is in a drought-in ...
It was a light-bulb moment for me when I realised that the brassicas (cabbages, broccoli, cauliflower, kohlrabi) are biennials. Now stick with me. This is more than just a revelation of botanical te ...
I need more summer bulbs. My steppe garden is suffering it’s mid-summer fade, as happens with natural steppe ecosystems and gardens that are inspired by them. Most mediterranean gardens suffer t ...
When designing a garden, the most fundamental and influential decisions you’ll make are around the shaping, the moulding, and manipulation of space. This isn’t just designer-speak. Whether y ...
It’s a huge few days for The Gardenist in the lead up to the launch of Dream Gardens Season 2, and I thought you might like to keep up with what’s going on in case you have the chance to catch any ...
WOW! It’s the only possible response to the last two weeks – our very first Travelling Masterclass, taking in and teasing apart, the best naturalistic perennial plantings in the UK, The Netherland ...
Talk about serious re-calibration. Through a lot of laughter. We’re one week into our first Travelling Masterclass involving the hungriest group of gardeners I’ve ever travelled with, and we’ve ...
Every now and again, you’ve got to trust your gut. The head said to spend the day at the eye-poppingly blue Lake Bled, in Slovenia, and maybe have a lazy one, just reading. The gut said otherwise. ...
There’s no doubt that Isola Bella, on Lake Maggiore, is totally and utterly over the top. What’s much harder to work out is how it gets away with this. It charms you into suspending discernmen ...
I remember being blown away when James Van Sweden, speaking in Melbourne in 1989 about his huge plantings of perennials in the USA, told us that many of his clients found that their favourite season w ...
I’m set up for the dry. The only water available is from our tanks, and we really only have enough for the house. For this reason, I don’t grow vegetables over the summer, and the ornamental gar ...
I don’t think there are many plants that make me go weak at the knees. I wish there were more. It’s plantings that are more likely to do if for me – great combinations of plants, bouncing off ...
It’s stupid how long I’ve wanted the rose named ‘Graham Thomas’. I don’t grow roses, as a rule. I’ve no patience or tolerance trying to integrate them into the largely perennial planting ...