The brassicas are bolting! It sounds alarming – something that should be shouted by a panic stricken messenger bursting into a roomful of concerned villagers…
Read moreDay 119: garden overwhelm
There’s a degree of garden overwhelm around just now, inescapable in casual conversations with friends, exchanges with folk on social media…
Read moreDay 118: the miniaturist
These last few days of April are something of a delight for the miniaturist. Buds bursting in agonisingly slow motion …
Read moreDay 117: fashionably late to sow
And we’re off! Sauntering up to the starting block several moments after everyone else has sprinted around the first corner…
Read moreDay 116: changing of the guard
Clouds chasing each other in front of the sun while April blows and blusters in the garden, and even the rumour of rain later in the week…
Read moreDay 115: the thin blue line
The thin blue line that runs tentatively through the gardening year has experienced an interruption here. Typically by now the Spanish bluebells would be in flower…
Read moreDay 114: frost weary
Right, enough of the chilly starts. The apple blossom is out – the pear has been in bloom for a while now…
Read moreDay 113: hints of wisteria
The first blossom on the wisteria is out. A hint of what’s to come, the merest breath…
Read moreDay 112: Melianthus major
As gardeners, we probably shouldn’t take comfort in how bloody awful other people’s plants look, but when they’re in a posh garden, this kind of thing can often be a source of comfort…
Read moreDay 111: hoop petticoat daffodils
Talk about blowing your own trumpet. There’s not much more to the hoop petticoat daff (Narcissus bulbocodium) than its great long schnoz…
Read moreDay 110: the weirdness of weeding
Running my eye across the borders now, I’m reminded of what irks me most about our approach to gardening – our attitude to the plants we call ‘weeds’…
Read moreDay 109: ash
The ash isn’t a popular tree in suburban gardens. Mine certainly isn’t greatly beloved by the neighbours who…
Read moreDay 108: frozen sambuca
It’s disappointing to discover that, of all the ingredients essential to for a liqueur to be sold as Sambuca, the extract of elderflower (from the species Sambucus) is merely an optional inclusion…
Read moreDay 107: dandelion time
Time is a tricksy character. We measure it in all situations by the appearance of regular markers and, in the garden, we use plants; the first snowdrop, the first blossom…
Read moreDay 106: snowy mespilus
Not every plant got the memo about spring being late this year – and that really shouldn’t be surprising…
Read moreDay 105: pheasant’s eye
It felt as if the daffodils were taunting me when I got to work in the morning, most of the yellow varieties having faded for the season, but the pheasant's eye (Narcissus poeticus) going strong…
Read moreDay 104: splinters
Feeling like a pincushion just now, having spent the morning battling an unruly, neglected climbing rose…
Read moreDay 103: flexing pelargoniums
Bright, eager sunlight, streaming through the glass – uncomfortably warm on my left side and causing me to squint at the computer screen – banishing memories of the snow flurries that began the week…
Read moreDay 102: later sowings
‘Better late than never’ is an epithet whose veracity I’m sure to be testing over the coming weeks, having only just got my first seed order for the year in…
Read moreDay 101: The Grumbling
The greyness of it. The coldness of it and – to top it all – the dampness. Winkles its icy fingers between every layer of your clothing and freezes you to the marrow…
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