My must-have Sedum
No matter what else happens in my garden there is one plant that I couldn’t be without: Sedum spectabile, or as I should now call it Hylotelephium spectabile. (Botanists at the RHS have changed the scientific name of this class of hardy herbaceous perennials, but I suspect most gardeners will continue to refer to them as Sedums for some time…
Deadheading dahlias
It may be feeling distinctly autumnal right now, but if you’ve planted dahlias the good news is they will keep on flowering right through to the first frosts. There’s just one catch: to prolong flowering you will need to keep deadheading them, thereby encouraging the plant to produce new buds. The only problem is it’s not always easy to distinguish…
Kinver Open Gardens
Last weekend I was struck down by a severe bout of garden envy, a perplexing condition of conflicting symptoms that leaves the afflicted feeling both deflated and inspired in equal measure. In fact, I spent two gloriously sunny afternoons ambling around the back gardens of Kinver, a rural village in the West Midlands, with friends who share my enthusiasm for…
Plug plants
Plug plants are a terrific way of adding variety to your garden without the hassle of raising everything from seed or spending a fortune on full-grown plants. This year I made the most of a couple of early offers from online plant retailers (in one case, 72 perennial plants for the cost of postage and packing only!), and have been…
Plant of the month – rosemary
With a few days of sunshine (a total of three, I think), generally warmer temperatures (until today) and plenty of rain, this month the garden has at long last burst into life. It’s the end of April and we are finally off and running. But which plant has spread the most joy this month? It was a difficult decision. Cheerful combo…
15 minutes and counting
It was grey, dull and chilly, and I was having one of those days when I didn’t feel like 5 minutes of green, let alone 15. But as I still hadn’t finished all the jobs on my March checklist, let alone started on April’s, I had to find a way to get myself motivated and out there. So I set…
Pansy makeover
Remember those winter-flowering pansies and violas you planted back in the autumn? They are probably looking a bit ragged right now. Mine certainly were. But give them a bit of TLC, and these hardy little plants are sure to reward you with a pretty flush of Spring blooms. I’ve just been giving mine a bit of a makeover. It’s the…
Late fruit tree pruning
The clocks have gone forward and it’s officially Spring, but you’d never know it given the current weather, and neither does my apple or pear tree! Both are in bud but neither has produced any leaves yet, so I figured I could get away with some late ‘winter’ pruning this week. Conventional wisdom advises pruning when the tree is dormant,…
Hidden Hellebores
March may be filled with the sunny glow of the daffodil, but it has a loyal compatriot in the tough, cold-hardy Hellebore. These harbingers of Spring thrive side-by-side in the flower borders around my pond, and together with the early-evening song of a vociferous blackbird, they mark the turning of the season. Hellebores have a demure charm, with gently nodding…
15 minutes of white
When the Beast from the East met Storm Emma it was no fairytale. With huge swathes of the UK under red weather warnings (risk to life) and the Met Office urging us to keep ourselves safe from the onslaught of icy Siberian winds and heavy snow, the weather us Brits so like to talk about was suddenly worth talking about….
Give wasps a break
Wasps get a bad rep at this time of year, because at the end of August they become obsessed with what we’re eating and drinking. Unfortunately, the resulting human–wasp encounters often end up in (human) tears and/or a squashed wasp. But I say, be kind to wasps, because although they might be a bit annoying right now, most of the…
Hungry hedgehogs
Ironic that it was Hedgehog Awareness Week last week, because here in our small back garden in Hampshire we have been becoming increasingly hedgehog aware. It started as a bit of a mystery. Every morning we would find the cage on top of our bird ground feeder knocked askew, and the remains of the birds’ mealworms and suet devoured. A ratty visitor perhaps?…