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Daily Flower Candy: Phytolacca polyandra
One of the joys of writing this blog is having the incentive to seek out and learn about new plants. Today, on a training course at our company conference centre, I took some time out to explore the...
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Daily Flower Candy: Amaryllis belladonna
Whether it’s candy floss, baby, lipstick or rose, when it comes to autumn flowering bulbs, shades of pink are decidedly de rigueur. Right now there are colchicums, schizostylis, crinums, cyclamen and...
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Sissinghurst – Fire and Ice
By late summer both of our plots have started to run out of puff, so I am always keen to seek out gardens which manage to keep up a good head of steam into autumn. Sissinghurst is open almost every day...
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Daily Flower Candy: Begonia ‘Glowing Embers’
Begonias are such stalwarts of the summer garden that they are often overlooked, even sniffed at, by so-called fashionable gardeners. I’m not attracted by the enormous, dinner-plate sized blooms of...
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Top Tips: Preparing Your Garden for a Summer Holiday
The school summer break is over and the kids are back for the autumn term, which means it must be time to take our holidays. I love September: the hazy light, the gentle warmth that seems to radiate...
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Picturesque Perfect: Hotel Endsleigh, Devon
‘A Cottage’ is how Georgina, sixth Duchess of Bedford, described her country home at Endsleigh in Devon. Most visitors today, whether to the garden or elegant hotel, would describe it in somewhat...
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Daily Flower Candy: Fuchsia magellanica var. gracilis AGM
Few plants hold their flowers as gracefully as fuchsias. Whether large or small flowered, the blooms typically tremble at the end of fine wiry stems. How I enjoyed unceremoniously popping the...
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Lost for words
Rarely do I find myself lost for words but tonight, as I consider my return to work and the inevitability of autumn, I feel a little subdued. This is a far cry from my elation earlier today when...
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Daily Flower Candy: Kniphofia rooperi
Before the Second World War kniphofias, better known as red hot pokers, were one of Britain’s most popular garden plants. They sustained gardeners’ Victorian fascination with the exotic, whilst...
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Getting Noticed
It’s always nice to be noticed, and even nicer to be appreciated. Today I am walking tall and smiling like the Cheshire Cat as not one, not two, but three organisations have good things to say about...
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Daily Flower Candy: Colchicum ‘Waterlily’
These flowers may faintly resemble those of a Nymphaea, but here the resemblance of Colchicum ‘Waterlily’ to an aquatic plant ends. Like other colchicums, the flowers of C. ‘Waterlily’ emerge naked,...
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Daily Flower Candy: Lilium ‘Kushi Maya’
‘Lilies in October!?’ I hear you exclaim. Maybe in the southern hemisphere, but not in England, surely? Well yes actually, these wonderful, fragrant flowers are in full bloom in our coastal garden now....
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The Winds of Change
I’ve just come in from the garden, where the temperature has dropped dramatically since lunchtime. A brisk, rain-laden breeze has whipped up, carrying away summer’s last whispers. I fear autumn is...
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The Remains of the Day
There comes a point every year when I begin to lose sight of our London garden. It’s nothing to do with my failing vision (although I do like to sport a natty pair of specs), or exuberant foliage, but...
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Daily Flower Candy – Cuscuta epithymum
If you’ve ever passed a gorse bush on a cliff top or heath and wondered why it’s covered in something resembling a blanket woven from strawberry bootlaces, then you’ve encountered one of Britain’s most...
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Flower Market Road, Hong Kong
Since the 1970s, Flower Market Road (花墟道) has been the go-to place for plants and flowers in Hong Kong. The term ‘market’ conjures up an image of a large open space packed with stalls, but Hong Kong’s...
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The Topiary Thieves
My regular trips to China offer few opportunities to observe nature up close. By and large I’m confined to big, ugly cities few people in the UK have heard of, but today I am in Hangzhou which must be...
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Daily Flower Candy: Rhus typhina
The list of plants I’d like to grow if I had space is endless and trees would make up many of that number. I am increasingly anxious to get on and start planting so that I might one day see them in...
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Trengwainton Gardens, Cornwall
From a very early age my parents took me and my sister to visit gardens. I like to think the reason was to cultivate our interest in flowers and plants, but as one follower of this blog commented...
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On The Bridge
You may recall that a year ago I wrote about The Garden Bridge, a proposed crossing on the Thames in London. With planning permission due to be granted by Lambeth Council on Monday, this visionary...
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