Back when I was living with the family in Northern Ireland (as you do, for twelve months, when you just feel like your life needs a bit of adventure), we discovered some lollies named ‘Parma violets ...
One Mediterranean climate flowering shrub I would not be without is the red flowering currant, Ribes sanguineum. You might associate it with English gardens, but actually this shrub is native to parts ...
I’ve given up trying to decide what I think about jonquils – particularly the indestructible and ubiquitous Narcissus ‘Soleil d’Or’. The arguments for and against them provide no clear posit ...
My most recent car has sensors in every direction, so if I get too close to anything, on any side, I’m given stern warning. It’ll even slam the brakes on, if the detected item is in my current t ...
I can’t understand how, after making firm decisions to avoid it, I keep falling into the trap of thinking that a Plant of the Week has to have a minimum glam-factor in order to be worthy of its plac ...
Make no bones about it, Lonicera fragrantissima is a rubbish shrub. The winter honeysuckle is a bulky, unwieldy thing with a branching structure that takes angularity to a degree of ugliness you’d ...
Though it’s now about 35 years ago, I could easily take you to the exact spot on the main lawn at Ripponlea (where I was doing an apprenticeship) when I caught my first whiff of a sweet, elusive per ...
Even as a young and enthusiastic apprentice, when the world was one big, happy, plant-diverse place, and I was too green to understand the seasonal cycles and their relative weight of floral glory, it ...
Plants that belong to June. They’re rare. Wintersweet (Chimonanthus praecox) didn’t need this value of rarity to make it worth growing. The perfume alone does that. But that it truly belo ...
Nearly everything that’s happening in gardens in June in my climate is residue from another month. There’s flowers hanging on here and there, and some good foliage yet to be hammered to smithere ...
If there’s something strange in your garden bed, who ya gonna call? Ghostbusters? Maybe. Ellen Willmott, however, might be a better answer. Miss Willmott, so the story goes, liked to sprinkle seed ...
The whole Plant of the Week thing has a natural tendency towards spotlighting hero plants – the ‘A’ listers of the horticultural world. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the last ...
I’m one of those people that have a thing for hedges. I just love the structure and framework that they provide a garden. I also love the sense of order and formality that they contribute, even when ...
One fact stands above all else when you start to discuss the sweet pea named ‘Matucana’, and that is that its perfume is outrageously powerful and evocative. Hand a visitor a stem, watch them sn ...
My foolproof go-to plants in root-ridden shade beneath dense-canopied trees make a very short list indeed. The first is Euphorbia robbiae, about which Richard … wrote nearly a year ago. Catch up ...
My mum (91 years) tells me that her mother wore a white nerine for mother’s day every year. I adored my Nana Barker, so that guarantees the nerine’s presence in any garden I own. But the notabil ...
Ammi majus is one of an extremely short list of plants that could be described as almost too good to be true. ‘Typical McCoy hyperbole’ you think? Here’s the justification for such a would sta ...