The Enduring Gardener Ideas, Tips & Guides

I’m not always the world’s most efficient or organised gardener, but there are certain things that I always try to do. One of these is to sow my saved sweet pea seed in Roottrainers and deep pots in October. They have germinated well and are now in the coldframe where they should develop a good root system over winter, ready for pinching out in the spring to encourage bushy growth. ..

A Glass Act It is always good to see a first class bit of recycling. Confronted by a couple of ruined greenhouses and a stack of redundant Critall windows, friends in Suffolk have fashioned a spacious and practical greenhouse from these unpromising materials. By using the windows on their sides along the length of the building they have achieved excellent ventilation and created a really good growing space.

Checking back to the same time last year it is interesting to see what was out this week last year – and compare it with this year. Usually the crocus tommasinianus are the first to flower but this year I found this pot of a creamy white crocus with brown markings in flower before the tommasinianus have even begun to show buds. The snowdrop

My poor mimosa is not enjoying this wet and windy weather. In previous years it has bloomed happily even when its branches have been laden with snow, but these endless gales have wreaked havoc, stripping most of the flowers and foliage off the tree even though our garden is fairly sheltered. With no pro

In the winter months why not visit the National Botanic Garden of Wales. Even if the weather is a bit d

Shepherd’s Hut makers, Court & Hunt have decided to branch out from the  practicality of  the hut  and also make this delicious and totally covetable summerhouse on wheels.  I hung it around for ages, wishing I had the life, the garden (and the money) that would accommodate it, but in the end I made do with a postcard.  Can’t you just see it in the evening light with candles flickering in the sconces as  Elizabeth Bennet waits a rendezvous with Mr Darcy?  

We spent an entire morning at the Botanic Garden which includes the Orchid Garden within it. We had the huge privilege of being  taken round by Nigel Taylor the curator who was able to tell us what we were looking at – otherwise there would have been a great deal of guess work or consulting books.  The undoubted highlight was the Orchid Garden – the colour and variety was astonishing and some of them are also deliciously fragrant.  They were breathtaking in every way.

Brugmansia looking Beauteous Earlier in the year a friend gave me a lovely Brugmansia (once known as Datura) complete with five flowers. Thanks to our long summer it has grown enormously and has burst into flower again – I’ve counted twenty flowers and buds.

Now is the perfect time to be planting asparagus and with a number of online retailers offering fast delivery there’s still time if you act quickly. Don’t get too excited though as it will be a couple of years before you’ll be able to harvest some home grown spears but as they say ‘good things come to those who wait’.

I’m very disappointed with my first sowing of the much-heralded new blight-resistant tomato ‘Losetto’.  While the other varieties achieved between 80-100% germination, I have a solitary Losetto i.e. 10%.  It was sown

The Garden Museum’s second annual festival of garden literature in the private gardens of Petworth House was a magical event. The setting was extraordinarily beautiful and seldom seen, so there was a real sense of entering a hidden domain. It actually felt a b

We may have been in the wrong places at the wrong times, and we didn’t have a local botanist guiding our walks, but we didn’t see carpets of wildflowers anywhere on our travels. I found I really needed to keep my eyes pe

I try to support plants with natural materials whenever possible,  whether its runner beans, sweet peas or border perennials.  I’ve had lots of fun creating a woven trellis for my sweet peas with the cobnut ( a type of hazel) prunings that I collected last week.  It’s something I’ve never done before, but I was dealing with a quite narrow space where there wasn’t room for the usual  wigwams and I’m rather pleased with the result which is both attractive and surprisingly sturdy.  If you can’t lay your hands on coppiced hazel, I have noticed that jute netting is available – not the same, but more discreet than plastic and it can be composted at the end of the season. Hen & Hamm

Rosa not-so-Viridis I am fond of this strange mutant rose, but for some reason this year the flowers aren’t green.  I don’t know whether this is  further mutant behaviour, or a response to the weather but it still makes a great picking flower and is guaranteed to attract comment if I put it in a vase.

Early March, early signs of life

I could stand it no longer!  Everything in the garden looked SUCH A MESS that I decided I had to make a start on some tidying and take the risk of more cold weather.  I began with the woodland area beneath the tulip tree where the matted mass of leaves was concealing cyclamen, snowdrops, lots of self-sown tulipa sylvestris (hooray!) and hellebores.

If ever there were plants that have their own ideas about where they will grow it is members of the fleabane family – the erigerons. The chances are that if you have bought plants and tried to establish them in your garden they will have shrivelled and died, while their self sown relatives look down on you from wall crevices or enthusiastically colonise the cracks in the paving of a nearby neglected garden. A few plants appeared in

Blown Away Leafblowers are generally something I avoid – too noisy, too heavy and too powerful, resulting in plants being blown away along with the leaves. What’s wrong with a broom? And I really can’t be doing with petrol-driven equipment – the garden isn’t large so there is no need – and as I’m about as far as you can get from a petrol-head, I find them a bit of a palaver and all-too-often difficult to start. So, after this extended moan, the good news is that I’ve found a leafblower that is easy to use, easy to control and much quieter than most.

Here’s some of the Best Small Gardens at the Hampton Court Flower Show 2012.

Whether it was steeply sloping meadows of Orlaya grandiflora, the brilliant blues of Salvia pratensis and Nice milkwort, or Dittany dotted grasslands there was always something to keep me interested. Lanes were lined with starbursts of Dianthus carthusianorum, the deadly poisonous Swallowwort was deceptively attractive and the flowers of wild lettuce looked much nicer than the bitter taste of the somewhat narcotic leaves. Among the plants I would happily have in my garden was the large-flowered Austrian flax, the lovely purple-flowered Jurinea and a rather fine cerise-flowered clover. Of course, the chances of them growing in a coastal garden in the south-east of England are remote, but I can dream.  

If, like me, you dig up your dahlias and store them overwinter – or have bought some new tubers – now is the time to get them potted up and growing-on. Stored dahlias should be removed from whatever you have stored them in (I use newspaper lined crates of spent compost) cleaned and tidied, checked for any damage or rot and then potted up into fresh compost. Give them a good soak and stand them in good light in a greenhouse, cold frame or other frost-free place. I’ve mulched my dahlias with Strulch to stop the compost drying out and have put a couple of slug pellets in each pot. Slugs love young dahlia foliage

The ledge next to the front door is looking a picture with the little prunus Kojo no Mai, the purple-pink Woodstock hyacinths and a similarly hued anemone that a friend brought as a present (thanks Paula).

On a grey, damp February day I went to see the wonderful exhibition at The Royal Academy  ‘Painting the Modern Garden – Monet to Matisse’ and was transported into a world of  horticultural delight. There was so much to love that playing my usual game of which one I would take home  (if I could!)  remained unresolved.  Although strangely, if I really had the choice, I would choose the one non-floral painting – Gertrude Jekyll’s Boots by William Nicholson. Those worn old boots speak of the labour involved in making the gardens that inspired the painters to capture them on canvas.    Every time I looked at the painting, it would summon up the glory of this exhibition.  Do go – it’s on till the 26th of April. www.royalacademy.org.uk  

Now that I have more time for gardening, I’m reassessing some parts of the garden to see if I can make improvements.  First for this treatment is the Lower Garden in front of the old part of the house.  It is tucked away in a corner and always seems to be bottom of the list for attention.  As a result, although it does look lovely in spring, it is pretty unsatisfactory for the rest of the year and is in need of replanting. The two  New Da

Whatever the habitat we were in, it was the diversity that was so exciting. With little human intervention, there was a balance that meant no single species dominated and every step revealed new species that gradually changed with the terrain evolving into perfect conditions for another array of plants. Close to the sea, a me

Seems that finally – after this long, warm autumn – the cold weather is about to arrive. With this in mind I have been busy bringing vulnerable plants undercover. The brugmansia was still flowering prolifically, but I took a deep breath and cut it back to about 50cm and have now given it a fleece cover as it is far too large to move. Succulents

Hmm……… Not everything at Chelsea is beautiful – it was a close run thing to choose the object that I most objected to, but this year’s award goes to this pig seat!

The Artless Charm of a true Cottage Garden While I’m as beguiled as the next person by pretty cottage garden style planting that you see at the flower shows, the real deal is so much more joyous. I’ve recently visited my 88 year old friend Deryck whose exuberant garden is about as far as you can get from designer chic.

I was talking to a fellow gardener and we were agreeing that this is a wonderful time in the garden – spring is underway and for the moment the weeds are smaller than we are.  Well, except for a sneaky few, they won’t actually get taller than I am, but they will certainly take over parts of the garden. Here, it’s the lesser celandines and Spanish bluebells that have resisted all control – try as I might they will be a major part of the garden for the next few weeks, especially in the woodland area, so I have largely learned to live with them.  And both are attractive plants and will die back in early summer, so it’s not all bad. That said, now is a

Things may have got off to a slow start, but suddenly the vegetable plot is delivering faster than we can eat. All that wet early on also means that everything has grown super-large. The (blight resist

Claire, our local interior designer, recently borrowed a few bits and pieces from me for her latest window and I’ve just seen the result – it looks like the best potting shed ever. I had to photograph through glass and avoid reflections, so please forgive me if the results are slightly blurry, but its worth looking at.

As someone with a bit of an obsession about plants and gardening, I do love looking at botanical details in major artworks – Madonna and Child paintings often have recognisable plants growing in the foreground – I saw clover, violets, daisies, roses and dandelions and some less recognisable plants too, of which I particularly liked this little plant in a painting at the Accademia in Venice. And on a day trip to Padua to se

Chateau du Rivau This small chateau at Lemere near Chinon is set amongst fields of corn and surrounded by fourteen different themed gardens. It is part medieval and part Renaissance and has the classic turreted towers of a fairy tale castle that charms rather than intim

Last weekend I visited the annual opening of the private gardens behind some of the 17th century Merchant Houses that line the Herengracht, Prinsengracht and Kaisergracht canals in central Amsterdam.  It’s predominantly a local event, so it’s a great opportunity to mingle with the locals and see what goes on behind the houses.  ‘Passports’ are on sale

They have been Framed The deep frames surrounding the window panes either side of the front door are perfect for displaying little horticultural treasures. At the moment Muscari have pride of place. In a few weeks it will be Auriculas.

On Being a Botanical Pedant Over New Year I went to the Stanley Spencer exhibition ‘Heaven in a Hell of a War’ at Somerset House and found it extraordinarily beautiful despite the depictions of  both the brutality and banality of war.  I would recommend that anyone who is in London makes the time to visit it – it’s on until January 26th and admission is free.  But – here is where the pedantry comes in – as a gardener I always make a point of examining the botanical content of paintings very closely – there’s many a Madonna that gets overlooked as I focus on the detail of the flowery mead at her feet, and portraits of noblemen and women take second place to the views of their gardens that form the background.  In the Stanley Spencer exhibition there were two wrongly identified plants  – a  beautiful vibrant portrait of Papaver orientale was labelled as Papaver rhoeas. P.rhoeas is the field poppy, symbol of fallen soldiers, while the oriental poppy is a blowsy, gorgeous border flower and oddly out of place in this exhibition.