If you’ve still a little Christmas money burning a hole in your pocket, then let me help you spend a very few pennies on some shiny new gardening tools. You can tell yourself it’s a noble deed in the cause of tidying the garden, and if Marie Kondo comes round to complain about more stuff, we can lock her in the shed.
Read moreDay 18: string of hearts
The string-of-hearts or sweetheart vine (Ceropegia woodii) is a perfect houseplant for those who might be a little forgetful…
Read moreDay 17: beech
All credit to the beech tree (Fagus sylvatica) for giving us blocks of soft, coppery brown throughout winter…
Read moreDay 16: borlotti beans
The beautiful borlotti bean, its white pods and beans splashed liberally with vermillion…
Read moreDay 15: berberis
Loathed by gardeners for its evil thorns that will penetrate the thickest of gloves…
Read moreDay 14: sarcococca
Throwing open the back door, I’m greeting by a rich, sweet scent…
Read moreDay 13: goosegrass
Without doubt one of the true survivors, stems of goosegrass, or cleavers, or (my favourite) ‘Sticky Willy’…
Read moreDay 12: pelargonium shoots
Around now, all being well, you should be being rewarded with fresh new growth on your pelargoniums…
Read moreDay 11: jade necklace vine
Some plants are simply fascinating with their sheer originality of colour and form, and building a collection of house plants allows you to get up close and personal with some truly different specimens…
Read moreDay 10: eryngium
Our second spiny customer this week, the sea holly, Eryngium giganteum…
Read moreDay 9: buying seeds
Have you bought your seeds yet? I’ve yet to inventory my current collection…
Read moreDay 8: signs of life
I don’t know why winter gets such a bad rap for being a time of inactivity…
Read moreDay 7: mahonia
With its holly-like leaflets and often tall, imposing stature, Mahonia stands about for much of the year looking like a prickly garden cousin of the nightclub bouncer…
Read moreDay 6: hairy bittercress
Hairy bittercress, Cardamine hirsuta, is a tiny cousin of the cabbage that grows with remarkable success right through winter…
Read moreDay 5: bare-root roses
They don’t look much just now – a bundle of prickly sticks with a tangle of brown roots….
Read moreDay 4: beauty in the wreckage
Beauty in the wreckage, Dan Pearson calls it. The dead stuff you could have tidied away in autumn…
Read moreDay 3: galvanised steel
Blue-grey, white fleckled, preferably with a bit of moss and algae – there’s nothing quite like the patina of galvanised steel in the garden, particularly in winter…
Read moreDay 2: dogwood
#gardeninspo365 Day 2 – dogwood
Read moreDay 1: tulips
gardeninspo365 Day 1 – tulips
Read moreThe Gardens, weeds & words podcast, Series 1 Episode 5
For episode 5 of the Gardens, weeds & words podcast, I’m joined by Kate Bradbury, author of Wildlfe Gardening and The Bumblebee Flies Anyway, to talk about the wildlife in our gardens, and our relationship to it. There’s the usual seasonal garden sountrack, a micro review of two more of my favourite gardening books, and some really bad piano playing. So, all in all, a fitting way to see out the year. I do hope you’ll join me.
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