Monday – press day at the RHS Hampton Court Flower Show, beneath a sun that shone with almost cruel intensity upon the show ground. So intense was the light that I’ll have to ask you to forgive this year’s photographs for being a little more washed out than usual – golden hour shots would have done the gardens more justice, but I was on site neither early nor late enough to catch the low slanting rays.
Read moreErigeron – a doughty daisy
Simplicity and delight in a flower, or a weedy menace? As is so often the case, it depends on your approach to gardening. One thing beyond debate is that, once established, this doughty little daisy will flower its socks off all summer long.
Read moreRHS Chelsea Flower Show 2018
With so much to take in at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, one visit is rarely enough. I was fortunate enough to be able to get there for a second time, this time later in the day, to catch up on those gardens and plants I’d missed on press day, with a change of camera lens and a mind to focus on the details.
Read moreRHS Chelsea Flower Show 2018
If Chelsea is to be any more than the (admittedly rather fabulous) latte froth upon the upper lip of the horticultural industry, it needs to have something to say, not only to gardeners like you and me, but to homeowners with an emerging interest in their outside space, to indoor gardeners with not so much as a balcony and, I’d venture to suggest, to park bench philosophers.
Read moreStihl cordless hedgetrimmers
Behind every glorious garden, whether the overriding style be neatly formal or wondrously wafty, there’s a machine-wielding gardener keeping the underlying structure in trim. It’s as necessary in a small domestic garden as a large public one, and in this post I’ll be putting machines aimed at both ends of the spectrum through their paces.
Read moreGardening as a career
Gardening? It’s not the career of choice for most people. Especially when there are so many other ways you could be earning a living. In this post, I explain why I took the choice to make a career of it, and try to gain an understanding of why this decision seems to cause mild discomfort for others.
Read moreMarch in the garden
March 2018 – what the heck was that? Just as we were beginning to enjoy the first signs of spring, the Beast from the East brought snow and cold weather from Siberia. Twice. Thankfully for us, rumours of its return at the end of the month proved to be groundless, though our friends in the north were less fortunate. We just got very wet instead.
Read moreA day in the life of… Gardens, Weeds & Words
A trip to Hever Castle Gardens with the Garden Media Guild. Daffodils, miles of yew an impressive Italian Garden...and an unexpected encounter with bedding plants.
Read moreA day in the life of… Gardens, Weeds & Words
A day in the life of a garden blogger. Spring rebooted, the vernal equinox. Surely winter's finished with us now?
Read moreBrilliant & Wild. A garden from scratch in a year
With one almighty flounce, Winter departs, and Spring asserts itself upon the outside world with a conviction that grows by the day. It’s the perfect time to be thinking about how you want your garden to be over the next year, and if that’s something you’ve not attempted before, Lucy Bellamy’s *Brilliant & Wild: a garden from scratch in a year* might just be the book for you
Read moreJanuary & February in the garden
From a dull grey start to a bitter, snowy end, winter has been topsy-turvy, and is now in the throes of a tantrum at being asked to go home. We may struggle to keep up; the garden, of course, takes all this in its stride.
Read moreThe Virgin Gardener Podcast
There’s a new gardening podcast in town. Co-hosted by yours truly and Sunday Times gardening columnist Laetitia Maklouf, it’s aimed squarely at newbie garden owners and enthusiastic amateur gardeners, and comes with a no-jargon, no-nonsense approach and take-home tips aplenty from the great and the good of the horticultural world. It’s called The Virgin Gardener Podcast, and you can find the teaser episode on iTunes right now.
Read moreWhen to sow chillies
Do you ever feel you’re getting buried under the weight of information and conflicting opinions on the internet? It’s as true with gardening as any other subject you might throw at Google. So in this post, I’m recommending you buy a packet of seeds and get on with sowing the contents. Then you can read the advice, contradictory or otherwise – but at least that way you’ll have avoided the procrastination hump.
Read moreA gardener’s tools: the dissecting kit
I’m delighted to welcome Kew’s Miranda Janatka for the first post in a series on A gardener’s tools, in which different gardeners will be writing about the tools which they find invaluable in their labours, as they tend gardens and nurture plants. Having seen a photography of Miranda’s dissecting kit on her Instagram feed, I had to ask her if she’d be happy to go into the background behind the collection and, fortunately for us, she said yes.
Read moreRabbit damage
Undoubtedly cute in the right place, but a magnificent pain in the backside in the garden – furry critters have been wreaking havoc again. This time the rabbit damage was limited to a fig tree, but its survival is still very much in the balance.
Read more#thatwinterspringthing hashtag project
To the uninitiated, hashtags are probably the most confounding aspect to social media. But a little delving reveals them to be a powerful tool for cutting through the online flotsam and plucking related content out from the relentless flow of global chatter. As winter turns to spring, I’m launching a hashtag to encourage Instagram users to share their seasonal images.
Read moreA day in the life of... Gardens, Weeds & Words
The roof is leaking, and the wind is howling...
Read moreHead Gardeners
Published last September, it seems criminal that it's taken me so long to get around to read this exploration of fourteen head gardeners, written by Ambra Edwards with photographs by Charlie Hopkinson. But the moment I heard about it, I was hooked, and wanted to savour the reading of it in the quiet days between Christmas and New Year. Well, it took me a little longer, but read on to find out what I thought of the book.
Read moreResolution
In which I resolve not to make any news years resolutions. And realize that, without intending to, I’ve been making them all along.
Read moreNovember & December in the garden
It’s new year’s eve, but I’ll leave the annual gardening retrospective for others. For me, that doesn’t feel right till winter’s done and sowing seeds can begin in earnest, and we’re not quite there yet, although the seed catalogues are beginning to look well-thumbed. But I’ve not yet had a chance to look back through November and December in the garden as seen through my Instagram feed, so I hope you’ll join me as I review the past couple of months.
Read more