Don’t you just adore those small and medium-flowered summer clematis – they will enchant for weeks and weeks from mid-summer onwards, if you have a good hack at them now. All that mass of tangled brown top-growth can be cut off entirely now, right down to about 1ft off the ground. I know it’s scary…
Having experimented with many different plants in my glasshouse over the years I’d like to share with you the 10 that have given the most pleasure for the least fuss. Here goes.. 1. Jasminium polyanthum. Yes that’s the very common one you can buy almost anywhere but especially as a gift at Christmas. Move it…
If you spot an apple tree still bearing fruit at this time of the year, chances are it will be a Sturmer Pippin. This is a very late cropping variety that was highly regarded in the Victorian period because it keeps so well on (and off) the tree; it will remain hanging on into January…
Question 1. It’s called the gin and tonic plant! If you brush against its foliage it emits the fragrance of a delicious G & T. Chin chin! 2. Plant identification A. Helleborus foetidus. Grows best in thin chalky soils and I snapped this striking specimen last December, obviously loving life in car park of the…
Hi folks, so sorry for a second email this week, we promise we won’t make a habit of it but we recently moved to Mailchimp to issue our weekly blog and, YIKES! some people say they’re not getting it because it’s going straight into their spam folder. We’re so sorry if this is the case…
As regular readers of our blog will have come to realise, of the three of us I am the one with the most inquiring mind, the fact finder, the researcher. So my holiday reading on our recent break to the Hebrides was a copy of the recently published ‘A History of Gardening in 50 Objects’…
Laura knows a good rose when she sees one! A few years ago she spotted a neglected specimen which was just about surviving near an aircraft hangar at Shoreham airport. It was autumn, the perfect time to take rose cuttings, and they thrived. She gave one to me and we all called it Rosa ‘Shoreham…
Every area of RHS Wisley garden in Surrey has ‘its moment’ some time in the year so it was with great intent that I set off last Sunday to take my annual tour around Battleston Hill, principally to look at magnolias. Unsurprisingly for this spring, it was wet, but en route to Battleston Hill there were…
If you’re already a member of the Royal Horticultural Society you’ll know that besides its internationally renowned Chelsea Flower Show each May, a more permanent jewel in its crown is the RHS garden at Wisley, just off the M25 in balmy south-east England – and luckily a manageable drive from my house. I’ve been visiting…
I say the word ‘artemisia’, and immediately springs to my mind the many silver-leaved forms that I already have in our garden. These are abrotanum, ludoviciana, absinthium, and pontica to name but a few, and the family also includes A dracunculus (French tarragon). Often aromatic, and with finely divided, decorative foliage, they are a useful…
