It occurred to me today, as I snuck up on a clump that looked particularly ripe for dividing, that there’s no plant that, once flowered, looks quite so morning-after-the-night-before as the snowdrop…
Read moreDay 69: the tale of the bent spade
It’s been some years since I broke a spade – or a fork for that matter. Time was when I’d use the things in the most inappropriate fashion…
Read moreDay 68: paeony promises
The paeonies have moved into stage two of their above-ground existence; fat, sharply pointed buds transformed in the space of a few days into bloody hands clasped in prayer…
Read moreDay 67: feed me, Seymour
Unlike the plants in our flower beds, those things we grow in containers are entirely reliant upon us for their nutritional requirements…
Read moreDay 66: jumping the gun
I’d imagined my tulips would emerge with grace and synchronicity, a kind of slow-motion dance of reaching and unfurling, something beautiful to behold each day as winter steadily hands over to spring…
Read moreDay 65: lazy lasagne
As close to a bulb lasagne as I’ll probably ever get – I think my brain can cope with disinterring the earthly remains of scilla and sorting them out…
Read moreDay 64: not so cheesy
When is a swiss cheese plant not a swiss cheese plant? When it’s a Raphidophora tetrasperma. Sold under a bewildering number of names…
Read moreDay 63: car park plants
Photinia x fraseri ‘Red Robin’, just readying itself for its first trick of the year, is not a plant to everyone’s taste. For one thing, it’s exceedingly popular…
Read moreDay 62: artichokes
The cutting down of the artichokes is a milestone event here. As tall as their near relative, the cardoon, this particularly variety throws up stems over six foot tall…
Read moreDay 61: spurge alien
There’s a week or so before the spurge flowers, when it hunches over against the bitter March winds that billow through the garden, long leaves overlapped like armour plates, protectively shielding the flowering bracts…
Read moreDay 60: winter work
Now that we can officially declare that winter is over – I'm not quite sure that I would, though, notwithstanding the backing of meteorologists everywhere…
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