Early June and gardens are approaching their peak and if you have chosen the proper tress and shrubs for leaf colour now is their time ! Even though it is mid summer you still have time to plant for autumn colour with either wild flower seeds of cosmos or nigella both of which if sown directly into the soil now will give god flowers from September to November and you can also inject some instant leaf colour into your borders by buying in some pots of cannas or even the exotic Ethiopian banana and placing them in between established plants as I have done here with some purple canna and […]
My Gardening Week May 17th 2015 ….. the excavators are back in town !
Early April in the garden is hosta time and by that I don’t mean that they are in their full classic pomp with huge leaves …. no far more important than that as it is the time they first start to show above the ground when the new leaves peep out and there is an entire army of hungry slugs all lined up for their favourite meal of young hosta leaves ! At this time I patrol the garden each morning to see if the new shoots are coming up and then douse them with a slug killer like slugtox …… this statement is usually met with howls of indignation […]
My Gardening Week April 11th 2015 ……. A Walk on the Wild Side !
We have an ongoing project in the woodland area where over the years we have been thinning and tidying up the conifers planted by the original owners of the land back in 1985 and a few weeks ago in March we had Peter with his chain saw for two full days ….. back breaking stuff as the blocks and cut branches have to be collected and stored . Poor Peter who is more used to dealing with me when working here and Irish style has plenty of tea breaks and chat however the wood is and has always been Snezana’s project (which she is very proprietorial about so hands off […]
My Gardening Week March 11th 2015 …… Go Home Charlie !
It is early March and suddenly overnight the front garden has erupted with the first crocus’s of the year and they are hot on the heels of the snow drops which kicked off last week and almost ready to break into flower are the miniature daffodils , tete a tete , so from now until end of April will see a succession of bulbs coming in to flower …… now is also the time to mark out mentally the empty spaces between bulbs so that you can plant up next autumn with extra bulbs for next Spring . This morning the first frog spawn of Spring arrived overnight in the […]
My Gardening Week February 14th 2015 …. Love your Garden on this special day !
February so far has been cold and overcast here at Old Spa Road but one morning the sun shone … briefly … in the Conifer Wood . A question most gardeners ask themselves , especially at this time of year in cold , dark,wet February days , is why do I garden ?? Clinically mad is one answer , joking of course but you get the point . Thomas Rainer , a US landscape architect based in Washington , describes himself in his CV as “ architect by profession , gardener by obsession ” which about sums it up and he has written which is for me the best definition […]
My Gardening Week January January 18th 2015 …. Sretna Nova Godina , Bonne Annee , Godt NytAr , Happy New Year !
After the usual Christmas over indulgence in eating and inactivity ( OK if you insist on the truth … slumped by the fire watching back to back editions of Strictly come Dancing ! ) it was good to get back to the normal day to day routine of a working gardener again and first up was a cutting back of decidous trees at the front and side of the house . It was a job I had been postponing for a few years and one I remembered each summer under the heading should have cut those during the winter ! A few common sycamores and some variegated ones were fairly […]
My Gardening Week December 18th 2014 …… Happy Christmas !
Still some colour in the garden mid December Inspiration in the garden can come from many sources but I find most of mine in gardening books and articles while the occaisional feature on Monty Don’s Gardener’s World BBC programme also contributes …. and of course you learn from other gardens and gardeners . These days gardening books are being published less and less as the knowledge available on the internet is now the main place to go for information on plants however this week I saw a collection of twenty year old garden books for sale in a local charity shop window … sad really as it was obviously a […]
Gardening Week November 23rd …… working in the Garden of Eden !
People when they hear that I have worked and lived for two years in the Seychelles Islands are always asking what it was like from a gardening perspective to live somewhere so exotic …. well it was a tropical paradise , a real Garden of Eden experience where the main view was just greenery everywhere on an all year round basis and something I wouldn’t have missed for the world . My house was set high up in the middle of a rain forest built on a rocky clearance looking out over the Indian Ocean and in the garden there were no seasons and the plants flowered every six weeks […]
My Gardening Week November 2nd 2014 ….. wild flower meadows and chaos !
The garden in early November In my last article I dealt with over zealous pruning which has got me thinking on pruning in general , why you prune and is it necessary to prune at all because in the wild where there is no one to prune so how does nature cope ? Of course in the natural forests pruning happens well … naturally .. in that trees , shrubs are kept in check by predators who eat and who depend on trees and shrubs for food , animals as diverse as elephants , giraffes , deer , bears , rabbits etc. all eat huge quantities of branches and leaves […]
My Gardening Week October 20th 2014….Terminator ….I be back !
October light can provide great photo opportunities in the garden Toby…. Mon Amour ! October is a good month to plant new trees and shrubs or to divide perennial plants as there will still be warmth in the ground to get the roots off to a good start before winter and the cold weather sets in although I now hesitate to plant shrubs at this time that keep their leaf throughout the year as some garden centres do not harden off the plants properly , keeping them under glass and these can perish when planted out at this time … better to let the garden centre take the loss and […]