February is for me always the time when the garden starts to come alive again and we see snow drops , daffodils , crocuses and new growth opening on trees and shrubs and is also the time when hard pruning needs to kick in . We are now back in control of the willows and dogwoods after a really hard pruning that we started two years ago , one that was urgently required as I had let things get out of hand over the past ten years as I really liked the growth but finally came to realise it had gone too far and now I am a born again […]

Because it is winter I am always conscious of how barren a garden can look and have treasured those trees and shrubs with great winter bark and similarly with shrubs with variegated colour leaves however I draw the line at golden leaf varieties which I always think look brassy and one shrub that is an old reliable here in winter is the eleagnus which is evergreen and needs little attention apart from cutting out the pure green leaves as variegated eleagnus will revert back to green if you are not vigilant with the secateurs and eventually take over the entire shrub . I grow three varieties of eleagnus here , […]

December and early January is generally a quiet time in the garden as most people’s attention are on Christmas preparations and sleeping off the New Year excess and of course the weather just after the shortest day of the year is cold , wet  and dark and even the most active of gardeners take some time off ! Traditionally years ago this was the time to look through seed catalogues and order in for the new season and of course those with some disposable wealth can look through outdoor gardening clothing guides and I was reminded of this recently when the Daily Telegraph published it’s annual guide to posh gardening […]

You might wonder what garden flowers can possibly have to do with wars but take the British wearing of the red poppy to remember their war dead from WW 1 or the War of the Roses in England in the 15th century where the House of York wore a white rose and the House of Lancaster a red rose or in Ireland where we remember our Republican dead of 1916 with the Easter Lily . This November marked the 100 year anniversary of the end of World War 1 , on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918 . It has always been a […]

October when wet and rainy is not a month I enjoy that much in the garden , leaves everywhere and everything is past it’s best , already signalling that this year’s growth is over but it is a useful time to get started early on the clean up and putting the garden to bed for the winter months . Of course all that pessimism is forgotten on dry days in October when the autumn leaf colour come into it’s own ! This year probably due to the drought in June and July has produced terrific leaf colour in most shrubs but particularly with the rhus cotinus or smoke tree and […]

This September we have been paying for the drought conditions we had during the summer and the weather has been generally cold and wet but growth has been good and as I was away for the first part of the month it has been catch up time with the grass . I use a ride on mower which mulches the grass and doesen’t collect which is great if you are cutting regularly but with any type of longish grass such as I faced when I came back it needs to be cut at a high setting and gradually lowered over the next two cuts , takes patience and as Pat […]

The Garden Open day for the Lion’s Club kept up the tradition of the rain staying away and a great turn out of support for two very deserving local charities with over 180 people paying in on August 12th and raising over a thousand euros . As always a nice blend of visitors who asked interesting questions about the garden , kept us on our toes all day  , many who contributed names to plants and weeds which I could not identify  , mayhem at times with children and dogs running wild but always well behaved ! Again as always the Clonmel Lion’s Club led on the day by Michael […]

I don’t know which is worse for the garden , Hurricane Ophelia last October that blew away trees , the Beast from the East that dropped a ton of snow in two days in February or the recent Kalahari style June and July drought  where trees and shrubs are wilting away under the effects of seven weeks on temperatures in excess of 30 deg and no rain . This heat will kill a lot of plants in Irish and UK gardens and even when the rain returns gardens will not recover and August to November will be disastrous for anyone with an open garden as trees and shrubs will shed […]

Those were the heart felt words of my gardening worker here earlier in June as she did some pruning in the back garden , yeah I know those deer are pretty bold if they hang around the back garden in the day light but anyway it struck me that twenty four or so odd years ago in Macedonia when we first worked together that if I had promised this city girl that if she stuck with me , some day she would be walking in deer shit I think she would have lit out  east and be still running somewhere around Vladivostock today … sometimes you gotta lie !! When […]

This is the first May in over 20 years that I have spent in Ireland and I have been bowled over by the colour and the vibrant greenness and now when asked what is my favourite month in the garden I can answer without doubt that it is May ! Wisteria even though originally from China is forever associated with English gardens and although in flower for only three weeks it is a magnificent climber , new plants are slow to come into flower and will need five years in the ground but the leaves even when not in flower are lovely and if you have a pergola you have […]