Book Review: Great Gardens of London
Victoria Summerley and I first came across each other, in the electronic sense, thanks to a lawnmower. We exchanged a load of Bosch, mutually appreciating the wonders of battery powered lawn mowers in... Read More
Aaaaaargh! Salt!
It’s that time of year when we all start thinking ahead to icy paths, slips and slides. And the magic word is “salt”. When your local council “grits” the roads, it’s actually salting the r... Read More
What June Gap?
I can never understand the references to the “June Gap”, supposedly the month of the summer in which nothing much is flowering and there is a lack of colour. Today (15 June) is more or les... Read More
Resilience
Someone I know doesn’t particularly like camellias. This may be because of their tendency to drop blooms all the time or, if you want to avoid the dropped blooms, their need for constant deadhea... Read More
Outwitting Squirrels
There are actually two books with the title “Outwitting Squirrels” and, surprisingly, with the same title subtext “101 cunning stratagems to reduce dramatically the egregious misappropriation of... Read More
Show, Show, Quick Quick, Show
The RHS Cardiff Flower Show is the first show in the RHS season. I popped along on its first day (17 April) with the firm intention of not buying any plants (I did), not consuming alcohol (I did but m... Read More
Sowing the Seed
Up until last year (2014) I’d been a total coir freak (as regulars will know). Growing on in coir’s great but I had been mystified by reports of problems germinating seeds in coir as I’d always ... Read More
Thinkingardens
Once upon a time I was a carefree gardener. You know the sort – buy a plant somewhere, take it home, dig a hole and shove it in. A chaotic garden seemed fine to me. All this hole digging kept me fit... Read More
My WoodblocX Adventure
I’ve blogged before about having to chop down trees and shrubs that got whacked in the winter storms. Now I’m blogging about filling the holes! I hit 60 a week ago: well, rather, 60 hit me! And I... Read More
RHS Cardiff Show 2014
A combination of a sunny day, some old friends and some new ones contributed to my visit to the 2014 RHS Cardiff Show being an enjoyable experience. To be honest, after a somewhat less enjoyable 2013 ... Read More
Why Weed When You Can Tulip
I’m often surprised by the number of people for whom weeding is a real pleasure. For me, it’s just something that has to be kept on top of so weeds don’t become a problem. Far more... Read More
Adieu, Sweet Mutant
With a bit of luck, the season of storms has passed now and, in time, those parts of the country that have flooded will drain and, in even more time, will dry out. I feel very sorry for those for whom... Read More
Has the RHS derailed itself?
Every now and again, something happens which really riles me. The usually placid me gets very hot under the collar! And today has seen one of those “nows”! The Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), o... Read More
The shameless plug
I like summer bedding. A lot! And until 2012, I grew a few thousand bedding plants every year. One large bed was religiously planted with a bit over 400 begonias; 20 large wall planters each swallowed... Read More
Spending time in the garden
At this time of year, the amount of time I can spend in the garden is limited by the weather and my energy level. But though I may not be spending time in the garden, it is nevertheless spending time ... Read More
A Diversion from Gardening: A Hobbit Walk on the Wales Coast Path
The renowned garden photographer, long distance walker, even more bad-tempered husband of the bad-tempered Anne Wareham and general all-round ok-fella, Charles Hawes has a walking blog which extols th... Read More
Happy new year (I hope)
Well, here we are in 2014 and I’m glad to see the back of 2013 to be honest. What started out as a promising year ground to a sudden halt at the beginning of May when a ladder fell from under me (I ... Read More
The Beechgrove Garden
Sometime in 2011, I discovered a BBC Scotland TV programme called “The Beechgrove Garden”. At the time, I was becoming disenchanted with Gardeners’ World on national BBC and Alan Titchmarsh’s ... Read More
Goodbye thug and hello stunners!
Warning – some of the links in this post are going to be VERY time limited! So be quick! Some 20-odd years ago when I was first turning a large “virgin-lawned” rear patch into something approxim... Read More
Taking things for granted – NOT!
Over the course of my nearly 59 years, I’ve had my share of broken bones, including a couple of ankles. Those lovely heavy plasters you get fitted with have nice strong feet and, with a bit of old t... Read More
Veddw through the back gate
Why this has taken me nine months to write I don’t know. Maybe I was worried about incurring the wrath of a certain garden maker. But I realised that the aforementioned garden maker (the famous ... Read More
When is a spade not a spade?
When it’s a Sukoppu”. “Eh?” I hear you ask silently, “What the ‘eck is one of those?” A Sukoppu is neither spade nor shovel. It’s, well, what it is. Most gardeners will have a selectio... Read More
Yellow has arrived
Celandine is appearing everywhere, despite all my efforts to eradicate it, the various red, blue and mauve primulas I planted around the garden are hiding while yellow ones appear in beds and borders ... Read More
Camomile tea isn’t just for drinking
As well as drinking the stuff, you can use camomile tea in the garden and the greenhouse. As a “pesticide” it zaps anything that pyrethrum would zap. It’s also good for preventing da... Read More
Happy Easter
Well that’s the site backend rebuilt. If you’re using a PC you won’t see much difference but the site will now display a lot better on mobile devices (phones, tablets and so on). One... Read More
Summertime, and the weather is yuck!
The British summer we’re having at the moment conveniently brings together several general pre-occupations of gardeners – rain, slugs and things not growing. At least the lifting of the last hosep... Read More
Plant labels – do you love or loathe them?
To label or not to label, that is the question! I was recently involved in a Twitter exchange about the pros and cons of labelling plants in public gardens. I suspect I was in the minority which, on b... Read More