Here’s a fancy knotweed – Persicaria runcinata ‘Purple Fantasy’. I can’t remember quite where I first saw it – perhaps in one of the glorious container displays by the porch at Great Dixter – but I knew it would soon be in my garden…
Read moreThe Gardens, weeds & words podcast, Series 1 Episode 14
In this episode I’m mulling over good gardening writing that reinforces our own opinions, and struggling with when it doesn’t. For me, that means alstroemerias.
Read moreDay 211: Japanese anemone
Summer is the time when that most delicate of thugs, the Japanese anemone (Anemone x hybrida and A. hupehensis), appears in the garden…
Read moreDay 210: Tagetes cinnabar
Had the medieval courts of France and England vied to produce a bloom encompassing all their regal splendour and majesty, I doubt they could have done better than Tagetes ‘Cinnabar’…
Read moreDay 209: cutting lavender
Is it too soon? The bees and the hoverflies, the butterflies and the moths are still loving the lavender but, come the end of July, I’m itching to get in there with my secateurs…
Read moreDay 208: Rudbeckia 'Goldsturm'
One of at least two plants I can think of sharing the common name Black-Eyed Susan, Rudbeckia fulgida var. sullivantii ‘Goldsturm’ always begins to put in an appearance towards the end of July…
Read moreDay 207: Salvia uliginosa
Hardy salvias ask very little from the gardener. Lots of sun, a very little water. That’s a about it, and yet, they bring colour and volume to the summer garden with great generosity of spirit…
Read moreDay 206: sun loving dahlias
Summer in the garden – confoundingly warm, days spent working in the flowerbeds a kind of blur, a skin prickling, water swigging hot mess of a gardener. The dahlias soak it all in…
Read moreDay 205: cool corners
I am not built for heat and so, while I work outside during much of the day, I arrange corners of the house to make me feel cool as soon as I get back in…
Read moreThe Gardens, weeds & words podcast, Series 1 Episode 13
“Ask a busy person”, they say, if you want something done. And since I wanted to talk about how our gardens join together to form something more than the sum of their parts, who better to ask than garden designer Jo Thompson, whose Springwatch garden at the RHS Hampton Court Garden Festival was a celebration of just that.
Read moreDay 204: Achillea ptarmica ‘The Pearl’
With Achillea ptarmica ‘The Pearl’ planted only a few feet away from Helenium ‘Moerheim Beauty’, I realise I have sneezewort and sneezeweed in the same border. I may have to rechristen it the Snuff Bed…
Read moreDay 203: oak leaved hydrangea
The oak leaved hydrangea (Hydrangea quercifolia) is not a plant that shrinks into the background. Autumn is really when it comes into its own as each large leaf takes on rich, burnished tones, but in summer it’s no slouch…
Read moreDay 202: scarlet cinquefoil
You’ll no doubt have noticed that some flowers close up for the night. I wasn’t aware that cinquefoils had this habit until I wandered into the garden to take a portrait of Potentilla thurberi ‘Monarch’s Velvet’…
Read moreDay 201: polkadot begonia
Day 200: perennial pea
“What’s the point of a sweet pea that doesn’t smell?”, people ask. Unless you’re blessed with a slug-free garden where you can sow directly into the soil, raising a sweet pea from seed is a bit of a faff without the reward of their delicious perfume.
Read moreDay 199: Aralia cordata 'Sun King'
Some people love a zingy flower clash, all bright colours and an irreverent disregard of harmony. Others prefer their interest to be generated from the contrast between foliage forms…
Read moreDay 198: evening sun
A certain insouciance begins to infiltrate our garden at this point of the year. It’s as if some plants suddenly decide to let themselves go…
Read moreDay 197: Althaea cannabina
The latter half of July should, if the weather’s behaving itself, bring blue skies and Althaea cannabina to my garden…
Read moreDay 196: stellar pelargoniums
Of all the pelargoniums, the stellars are among my favourite to grow…
Read moreDay 195: bear’s breeches
My acanthus is flowering. Not prolifically, but noticeably, two flower spikes held aloft, towers of purple and white flowers in that characteristic arrangement that gives the plant its common name…
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