Aren’t we pretty, though? Delicate white trumpets upturned with a coquettish gaze, innocently knowing, butter-wouldn’t-melt. You’re not kidding me…
Read moreDay 180: fennel fluff
Fennel, a favourite border floofler, giving both height and volume with an airy grace that somehow manages to avoid bulk. It’s quite a trick to pull off…
Read moreDay 179: bramble busyness
Nothing reaches into the week beyond midsummer with quite such unbridled enthusiasm as a bramble. Flowers already beginning to fade…
Read moreDay 178: Salvia 'Hot Lips'
I put my faith in Hot Lips this year. Salvia ‘Hot Lips’, I should specify, for the removal of any misunderstanding…
Read moreDay 177: Phlomis russeliana
Boo to the custard-haters, the disparagers of yellow in the garden, they who would ban the butters and the creams from the beds and restrict them to the kitchen and the breakfast table…
Read moreDay 176: planting with Mother Nature
Mother Nature and I have different opinions about how this border should be planted up…
Read moreDay 175: pollen sac
I distinctly remember having to give the boot to one quite established client who steadfastly refused to view poppies as anything but weeds…
Read moreDay 174: car park plants
I park the car badly. Since the switch for the door mirrors broke off, I’m having to hang out of the driver’s door as I back up…
Read moreDay 173: oak-leaved hydrangea
A dull summer’s day can seem a little depressing, but there’s a luminosity in the garden that’s particularly pleasing
Read moreDay 172: midsummer greys
I’m hoping for a renegade sunbeam to break the clouds today and spotlight the blossom on the mock orange…
Read moreDay 171: a digger in the daisies
Another hospital, another car park. Another dog if I’m honest, this only being Nell’s third day walking…
Read moreDay 170: tipping point
This is the tipping point of the year in the garden. In the lead-up to the solstice this hardly comes as a surprise…
Read moreDay 169: the weight of water
The storm came in the night, rain in torrents, thunder, lightning – the full schamozzle…
Read moreDay 168: pause, please
That distinctly-remembered excitement of rosebuds on an evening walk along the garden path can surely be no more distant than a week ago?
Read moreDay 167: chartreuse
If any colours could be said to ZING in the garden in June, it’s neon pink and chartreuse green…
Read moreDay 166: mouthwatering plant combinations
Some creative folk experience the phenomenon of synaesthesia, where the experience of one particular sense becomes linked to those of one or more of the others…
Read moreDay 165: the paeony and the rose
The advantage of the paeonies being late is that garden time has been concertinaed and, this year at least, there’s a crossover with the roses…
Read moreDay 164: white crab spider
The white crab spider (Musumena vatia) is an unlovely thing…
Read moreDay 163: the spring/summer handover
Another season when the lack of rain is saving us from manky forget-me-not syndrome…
Read moreDay 162: buff-tailed bumblebee
The garden brings joy in so many guises, but in few more generously than these furry little bears literally bumbling about from flower to flower…
Read more