People, Plants + Places

November used to be the nadir of the garden year, with nothing in flower, autumn colour fallen and all borders cut back and bare.  No more!  Ornamental grasses, discussed recently...

  Is it too early to be thinking about garden visits for next year?  Well I don’t think so and if there was one garden that I would say should...

Few perennials are as useful as Rudbeckia fulgida.  There are a seemingly endless number of yellow daisies for the last few months of the gardening year – nearly all North...

In my role as a garden designer and lecturer I have found that ornamental grasses can divide the room, people tend to love or loathe them.  A shame when people...

“Life without phlox is not worth living” said the German gardener, nurseryman, plant breeder and writer, Karl Foerster.  This year is the 150th anniversary of his birth, and has been marked...

June is the month of pink geraniums. In many British gardens at least.  And that's 'geranium' in the sense of the hardy 'cranesbills', not the pot plants – a confusion...

This has to be one of Surrey’s best-kept secret gardens, where art and nature come together in perfect harmony.   Celebrating its fortieth anniversary this year, created by Hannah Peschar and...

  Daffodils are the quintessential spring flower.  Unlike tulips, they are almost totally reliable in their ability to flower again, year after year, slowly building up their clumps.  Older gardens...

At this time of year, we often have to carefully crawl through a border to appreciate those early risers - the spring bulbs.  But what about growing them at eye...

Amongst really early garden flowers, Cyclamen coum are amongst the most rewarding.  They do however require patience.  Buy snowdrops and within a couple of years they'll look established and thoroughly...

Midwinter is undoubtedly the bleakest time of year, with several months ahead of us before the gentle warmth of spring encourages shoots to push their way through the soil.  At...

In the gardening past it was normal practice to cut back seed heads and other dead herbaceous plant material in autumn leaving beds and borders of bare soil.  We are...