Know your enemy

I love plants and spend every working day encouraging other people to appreciate them too but particularly during the summer, for hay fever sufferers, not everything in the garden is rosy. Most of us welcome the prospect of fine sunny weather to get out there communing with nature but being in the garden surrounded by the cause of so much misery is no joke if your eyes are streaming and your pockets stuffed full of paper hankies. Anti histamines are great and Vaseline smeared around your nostrils can trap allergens before they can get up there, but an already red and runny nose given the added allure of a greasy shine isn’t everybody’s idea of an attractive feature so it makes sense to do a bit of detective work and get to know your enemy. Two of the worst offenders are tree pollen early in the summer and grass pollen later on. Like other wind pollinated plants they rely on getting masses of pollen into the air in the hope that it will reach a female flower of the same species, indiscriminate and designed to cover as wide an area as possible, your nose included. Willow, alder and the Acer family are a few of them, from our point of view hazel isn’t usually a problem because it’s done its stuff before we venture out with the better weather but grass get us later in the summer when we’re outdoors much more and it isn’t just a problem when it flowers either. When we cut the lawn it gives off a chemical called Coumarin which can be an allergen to some of us and as the mower cuts it churns up all the dust, pollen grains and fungus spores trapped between the blades of grass. Cutting the hedge releases the same trapped particles too, privet seems to be a particularly bad one and the dreaded x Cuprocyparis leylandii can cause contact dermatitis as well as annoying the neighbours. It isn’t all doom and gloom though, there are many ways to make the garden a much less hostile place. Lawn isn’t compulsory, a mix of paving materials, preferably recycled and low spreading plants like Ajuga, Alchemilla, Geranium, winter heathers, Epimedium and Astrantia look lovely all year and instead of a hedge try a trellis screen for the boundary with climbers like Clematis hybrids, climbing Hydrangea, passion flower and purple leaved grape vine. Some of the prettiest trees don’t produce any pollen at all, like the double flowered Prunus avium ‘Plena’and lots of our favourite blossom and fruit trees in the Prunus and Malus families don’t cause a problem generally because they’re pollinated by bees. Shrubs like Hebe, Spiraea and Escallonia are fine too as are a wide range of fabulous perennials like Anemone x hybrida, Paeonia, Phlox and Veronica which chosen carefully and put together well can give colour all summer long so you can sit outside and enjoy the garden sneeze and tissue free.

Spoiled for choice

At this time of year we’re spoilt for choice by the sheer variety and volume of seeds and young plants for sale, it’s hard for inexperienced gardeners to know where on earth to begin.
A trip to any garden centre or a quick flick through a catalogue is evidence enough that traditional bedding is as popular as ever and eye popping colour mixes that have me reaching for my sun glasses are still there, but suppliers know we’re a bit more sophisticated now and offer mixes in enticing shades like ‘moody blues’,‘sunny yellows’ and ‘pretty pinks’ and it’s a recipe for success. Most plants for summer schemes are chosen for flower colour alone and for bedding in containers that’s fine, pots can be filled with perfect compost , placed wherever the species dictates and fed and watered to their heart’s content.

If the plants are going into the border though, the way we make our choice needs to be more thoughtful. Soil type and aspect should be the first consideration and if you aren’t sure what sort of soil you have look at the wild flowers growing in it for clues.
Buttercups and lady smock like to keep their feet wet so if you have lots of them then your soil is probably heavy and moisture retentive, forget me not and wild violets prefer dry free draining soil but if you have docks and nettles which like it rich and fertile then you’re lucky, most annuals thrive on it . But all is not lost if you don’t have perfect conditions, the wild flowers that like your particular garden might have flamboyant relatives if you prefer something fancy. Foxgloves have been bred to give bigger flowers, more compact plants and more colour variations but they will still tolerate fairly dry semi shade. Aquilegia are available in lots of colours now and are still happy in moist shade and for open sunny places what could be lovelier than the annual poppy, not just the vibrant red of cornfields, but in all shades of pink too.

We’re all aware of the plight of bees and other pollinating insects so they need to be taken into consideration too and the more pollinators in the garden the better our crops of fruit and vegetable will be so it makes sense to grow flowers to help them. Single open flowers like Cosmos and mallows are great as are daisy look alikes Rudbeckia, Aster and marigolds. Flowers in umbels like Achillea and Ammi are wonderful for insects and add diversity in shape and form as well

There is more to choosing summer bedding than which colour petunias this year and as for my choice it’s wild flowers every time, not for me the formal single species blocks the Victorian bedders were so fond of, but native species happy and healthy in my soil, the bees love them and so do I.

Willows for wildlife



We all welcome the cheering appearance of early spring flowers and for some of us it’s the bigger and brighter the better with strong yellow daffodils, vivid violet hyacinths and double flowered primulas now available in every colour under the sun.
Others find the subtle beauty of delicate wood anemones and single primroses more appealing and for me there is one flower to which I look forward more than any other.

Our favourite flowers are often those familiar in childhood and this is no exception. Salix caprea better known as pussy willow is one of the first I remember picking just to stroke the furry little buds. I still love to see a tree in full bloom especially on a sunny blue sky day as their silver sheen gleams in the sun and then as the flowers mature and turn to gold the bumble bees can be heard droning in the canopy as they gorge themselves on the pollen.
Like most willows they like plenty of moisture in the soil and so are happy in our heavy clay, but unlike many other willows they don’t outgrow their welcome, remaining a relatively small tree throughout their lives.


Weeping willows, Salix alba ‘Chrysocoma’, are the ones we all know for their dramatic shape, fresh new spring growth and the way their graceful curtains fall over water. But they are much too big for most of our gardens, so an alternative for small spaces, the Kilmarnok willow which is a dwarf weeping version of pussy willow, is often recommended. Try before you buy though and look at a photo of a mature one. Although it does have furry flowers it has none of the grace of the weeping willow and eventually forms a squat congested mushroom of a tree – it's only a personal view but you can tell I’m not a big fan!
Instead I much prefer two relatively small but still elegant willows. Most of us will have room to accommodate one of them and both give year round good value for the space they take up.  Salix exigua, sometime called the coyote willow is fairly tall and upright with typical narrow silver blue leaves. Similar in leaf shape but more grey green in colour and rounded in habit, as wide as it is tall, is Salix eleagnos ‘Angustifolia’. Both are lovely garden worthy plants with fine textured foliage which catches the light and ripples in the slightest breeze.

As early spring begins to break, new foliage creates a soft green haze in the hedgerows, buds burst and pristine leaves start to unfold. Sharp spears of Iris and ornamental grasses pierce through last year’s leaf litter and frilly fern crosiers slowly uncurl. There’s something new to see every day now, look up or look down, the world is once again becoming green.

The client from heaven!

 I was delighted with an e mail I received yesterday from a thoughtful lady who has really grasped what gardening is all about. Not an imposition of will over a difficult site but an understanding of how to encourage her garden to give of its best.

Dear Cheryl

Your visit was extraordinarily useful and has equipped me in a way that I wouldn't have thought possible in one session.  I think it was because you dealt in principles - natures, shapes, colours etc. it somehow felt integrated and that was what I was after, a garden that makes sense. 

It's been a fascinating process, it's like the garden has impressed itself upon me as much as the other way around.  Plants that I thought I wanted just wouldn't settle in my mind and it's been sort of give and take with me and the garden coming to an accommodation.  It sounds daft but that's the way it is.  Anyway, I'm nearly there now and have placed some orders today but with still the majority to purchase.  I think it will be lovely one day and we are both looking forward to seeing it grow.

Thank you once again for your assistance and guidance

With warm wishes

from Jane

Every Little Helps



At the end of last year I entered a garden writing competition run by the Society of Garden Designers and to my complete amazement I actually won!
The title was the rather long winded. 
‘Has the time come for garden designers to have in mind at all times the wider impact of their work?’ 
The short answer would have been a snappy ‘Yes of course’ but why use three words when a thousand will do. My answer was aimed at other garden designers but the basic premise is that all of us who garden, however large or small our garden might be, have an impact for good or ill on our own and the wider environment.




Here are a couple of paragraphs

'We all see our gardens in splendid isolation, jealously guarding our own private domain, when in reality each one is only a small part of a network of interconnecting open spaces, woodland, hedgerows, ponds, sunny banks and shady hollows with their own opportunities for shelter, feeding grounds and home making by species which have lived around and along side us for millennia. As our gardens fall victim to the swings and roundabouts of fashion trends in hard materials and planting styles, the natural processes of seasonal change, leaf fall and decay, spring and renewal are the constant beating heart of any garden. Its inhabitants, from the microscopic soil organisms we don’t see, to the insects, amphibians, birds and mammals we do, form part of the web of its life but will only be there if the conditions for them are right.
We can get it wonderfully right and our gardens become richly, joyfully alive, when we get it wrong they are silent and soulless.

Within the boundaries of even a small garden it’s possible to achieve so much for the body as well as the soul. We know that the industrialization of food production isn’t sustainable or in any way desirable and to encourage the growing of a few vegetables and the planting of the odd fruit tree may seem insignificant, even a futile gesture, but the pleasure to be taken and the benefits to be gained can be remarkable. To experience the pulling of a carrot from the soil, the popping of a pea pod straight from the plant and the thrilling discovery of buried treasure in the digging of new potatoes is to gain an understanding of our relationship with the earth and our complete dependence on it. To enable a child to learn that or a parent to teach it is an unmissable opportunity.'


Our garden is our own tiny part of planet earth and as short term custodians of it lets do our best this year to help it to be the best it can be for all its inhabitants.  Individually we might only make a small change, but if we all do our bit, together we can make a difference even if it is only one garden at a time.

What are gardens for?



I’ve recently been to a Society of Garden Designers seminar, where members gather together to listen to the wisdom of the most respected in the profession and the title of this year’s was ‘What are gardens for?’

Gardens are made by people and as people are all different, then the reasons for making them, although superficially similar, are as diverse as we are but I don’t think it’s unfair to say that most of us don’t really think about it that much, just carrying on mowing the lawn and pruning the roses with a bit of a change here and there as the babies become toddlers with trikes and a sandpit and then a trampoline and goal posts.
Eventually the children grow up, fly the nest and mum and dad can sit back and relax on a new patio.
Well that is a least how it used to be when children liked playing outside, but the sad fact is that being outside is now the least favourite occupation of seven to eleven year olds, according to an excellent speaker at the seminar, Wendy Titman. Sedentary pastimes are much more popular, with the dreadful consequence that by the time children leave primary school, countrywide one in three are overweight and if statistics are to be believed that figure is set to keep on rising.

Is it because so many children are now brought up in densely populated cities lacking in green space, or is it that gardens are so far down on planners’ and house builders’ agendas that they’ve dwindled in size to become only slightly bigger than the new kitchen?
I’m sure they are many and varied but whatever the reasons, many children have become alienated form the natural world right from the very beginnings of their lives. It’s hard for me to reconcile this fact as I watch my neighbour’s children hurtle along the street on their bikes, but a sad fact nonetheless.


 For the New Year what about this as a resolution. Get the kids outside in the garden more, encourage them to poke about in the soil, dig up worms if they want to, show them how to plant seeds, grow a few veg to eat or just chill out with them and listen to the birds.
It’s the earliest years which make the difference and maybe this is one of the most important answers to ‘What are gardens for?’
They are places to play and as children we don’t just play for the sake of it, it burns calories, it gives us vital vitamin D and stimulates our immune systems. 
It’s how our species learn to understand about the world around us - important or what!

Nobody will care about the natural world unless they understand it.
Sir David Attenborough

Evergreens


If there’s one thing my garden will never be accused of, it’s being too neat and tidy.
From the first sighting of spring’s new and vibrant shoots, through the gay abandon of exuberant summer and on into the rich colour and swirling leaves of autumn, order is way down the list of my garden’s priorities. There are far too many lovely things to grow for me to consider giving houseroom to any more boring evergreens than the few token box balls by the front path.
That is until the time inevitably comes when all the lovely things withdraw below ground to patiently wait out the cold dark days of winter and I’m grudgingly forced to admit that far from being boring, it’s the evergreens in the garden which give it form, structure and a strong winter silhouette.

Throughout the rest of the year the formality of clipped hedges, the mounds of evergreen shrubs and the balls, cones and spirals of topiary are like corsetry, they underpin and support the billowing skirts of all the blowsy flowers, unobtrusive and discretely hard working, just waiting for their time to shine.
And here it is. In the cold grip of winter the box, privet, holly, laurel and yew stand solid and dependable, marking out the lines of the garden, unflinching in the teeth of biting winds and freezing temperatures and now the very thing I condemn them for, being static and immobile, becomes a virtue.
Their dense foliage offers a perfect shelter for over wintering insects and a hunting ground for hungry insectivorous birds. A bitter night’s frost sees them dusted with icing sugar and a fall of snow exaggerates their shape, transforming the ordinary into oversized chess pieces from Alice In Wonderland.
The smaller and denser the leaves the finer the texture and the easier the plant is to trim into elaborate shapes, this and their ability to throw out new shoots  from mature wood has made yew and box the plants of choice for formal hedging and topiary for centuries.

If plain dark green is just too dull, lots of conifers come in coloured leaved forms from the subtle blue grey and dramatic spire of Juniperus scopulorum ‘Blue Arrow’, a good choice for a focal point, to the many yellow leaved varieties of Chamaecyparis lawsoniana like ‘Golden Wonder’, better restricted to town gardens as the strong colour stands out like a sore thumb in a rural landscape.
The main drawback of most conifers, Taxus and Thuja being the exception, is that they don’t re-grow from old wood and their lack of regular care is responsible for some of the ugliest plants ever to disgrace a garden.
For coloured leaves of a different kind holly is very versatile, happy to grow in sun and shade it has lots of variegated forms with flowers to attract holly blue butterflies, berries for the birds and of course still as popular as ever for Christmas decorations. 

 Lord Leycester Hospital garden, Warwick






Hampton Court, Herefordshire

Horticultural Fireworks

Autumn began to creep in very early this year, there were Acers turning colour in  August, the hawthorn hedges have been weighed down by berries for weeks and my favourite shrub in Monmouth has spent the whole of September and October looking absolutely spectacular.
If you’re passing Bridges Community Centre it’s worth a detour into the car park just to see the Cotinus, the translucent oval leaves are the colours of glowing embers, from gold and orange to scarlet, cerise and rich deep burgundy. The transformation from a dull shade of dark green began on one side and has gradually suffused the whole shrub until it’s become a flaming bonfire.

If you’re there on a sunny day have a wander into Drybridge park too where the rich butter yellow and ambers of the lime trees are perfect against a clear blue sky and the lonely Acer griseum, dwarfed by the big old trees makes up for its lack of stature with  vivid vermillion leaves and ginger peeling bark.
It’s a great tree for autumn colour and for a small garden it’s pretty near perfect. Like Amelanchier lamarckii and Sorbus ‘Vilmorinii’ it’s small enough for most of us to accommodate and now is a good time to think about planting a new tree or three, the soil is still relatively warm and the roots will have the winter to settle in before the top growth gets underway again next spring.

November isn’t all horticultural fireworks though, it can be a melancholic time of year especially as the mists settle in along the Wye, but we gardeners are always looking forward and now is a brilliant time for making plans for next year whether just on paper as sketches and notes, or as I’ve done recently taking cuttings and collecting seed. I have to curb my enthusiasm for new plants at the moment as our house is up for sale and so I’m restricting purchases to bulbs for pots which is no bad thing for any of us to splash out on.  They’ll be a welcome burst of colour next spring and can be chosen for placing in any aspect or in any colour scheme, from vivid orange and cerise tulips to clash violently in full sun to quiet and refined snowdrops and aconites placed with ferns in a shady corner.
They’re temporary flowers and fairly inexpensive to buy so we can have fun without the guilt of an expensive and embarrassingly permanent horticultural mistake. If orange and cerise become a bit much together they can be separated after flowering and planted at either ends of the garden to flower happily for years to come.
If we’re still here next spring, mine will make a great entrance either side the front door and if we’ve moved on, together with my cuttings from favourite shrubs and all those saved seeds, they’ll move house too and be the beginnings of a brand new garden.







Grasses – high fashion and here to stay.



The shelter and seclusion of the garden is no place to hide from the fleeting fads and fancies of high fashion as anyone who fell victim to the ‘Majorelle blue deck’ phase will admit. Like it, the ‘heathers and dwarf conifers’ era has also long since been and gone, except for the once dwarf, now fairly sizeable specimen conifers towering over front gardens reminding us that in reality the term ‘dwarf’ actually  meant slow growing.
We can still see heathers of course where they look their best, vast purple swathes of them still grace our acid uplands, at home in their native environment, not with alien conifers but sedges and grasses, their natural partners of windswept hillsides and the latest addition to the plant world’s fashion palette.

In recent years the ‘new perennial’ movement has swept through northern Europe,  its free and easy natural style emulating the steppes of  Russia the North American prairies and for this time of year it’s the current fashion statement of choice.
A mix of long and late flowering perennials and architectural grasses there’s something for every early autumn garden here except perhaps those of the very neat and tidy brigade of gardeners who can’t keep their well oiled shears and sharpened secateurs away from anything which doesn’t form a tightly clipped blob. Who knows, one day this might become the latest ‘must have’ look.

Personally I’ve welcomed the move away from rigidity to a looser planting style and use grasses not only with perennials but shrubs too.
Clipped balls of balls are transformed by the arching waves of Hakonechloa macra and taller columnar shapes like Cupressus sempervirens look wonderful with the great sprays of Molinia flowers. 
I love them too with species roses, Viburnum, Cotoneaster and Berberis where they’re an accompaniment to hips, berries and turning leaves their colours heightening and fading together as the season slowly changes and we’re nudged unwillingly into shorter and colder days.
Many grasses have wonderful autumn colours in their leaves and flowers, and for those of you who haven’t yet been seduced by this latest garden style some of the best  are the Panicum family, one of my favourites is ‘Shenandoah’, a real beauty, turning wonderfully red later in the year.  For stunning leaves, Imperata cylindrica is striking all year, the ends of its leaves suffused with vivid red right through the summer and autumn.
If it’s structure and shape you’re after then Miscanthus are hard to beat, tall and statuesque in both leaf and flower and for the absolute ultimate in elegance, Miscanthus ‘Morning Light’ has the timeless grace and elegance of Joanna Lumley in flowing white linen. How’s that for high fashion!





 .

    ‘Live and let live’

Two very rare things have happened to me recently, the first being that because there were no immediate deadline to meet I  had time to just potter in my garden and enjoy it and the second is that I’ve just been watching two fat fluffy young thrushes sitting together sunbathing on the patio; it’s uncommon for me to see one thrush in my garden never mind two.
It’s odd isn’t it that we take more pleasure in the rare or unusual, than the common and everyday animals and plants.  I’ve hardly paid any attention to the six or seven blue and great tit babies that are around the bird feeder almost all the time, like collectors of trophies we would rather see warblers than sparrows and orchids than dandelions in our gardens. We even classify the most prolific plant separately as ‘weeds’.
I think it must go a long way back into our early human ancestry when we perceived successful species to be a threat and now we begrudge the success of species that do well, ridiculous isn’t it considering what a threat we are to the rest of life on the planet.

Not a week goes by without someone telling me that a once interesting insect is
‘a pest’, a shrub chosen for its speed of growth, now ‘completely overgrown’ or a creeping perennial, pretty it’s early days has  ‘taken over the whole garden’.

Surely we should appreciate the cabbage white butterflies as we do the holly blues and congratulate ourselves that we have such fertile soil that the honeysuckle we put in a foot high is now up to the bedroom window and those lovely little wild violets, so delicate in a pot, are now seeding themselves into every nook and cranny in the garden.


I think it’s time to live and let live, celebrate the successful, consider them in more detail, appreciate their many good qualities and to that end I’m going to sow again the wild carrot romping through the border, close up its flowers are covered in hundreds of tiny beetles and the white mallow where little wasps hide in it’s lovely shiny cups.

This isn’t just the wildlife fanatic in me being given free reign here, there are some sound principles of design at work too. The boldness and solidity of bigger clumps and drifts of the same plant help to make a small garden seem larger, repetition of the same plant creates cohesion and harmony and if a plant has seeded itself and spread around happily and healthily, then it has to be from it’s own perspective at least, ‘the right plant in the right place’.
Any horticulturalist would agree I think that that is the basis for successful planting and by association a successful garden.

As long of course that it’s not a species being too successful … and when it comes to the number of snails eating the leaves of my runner beans…..but then again, without the snails I wouldn’t have the thrushes.

New favourites

This month's new favourite plant combination, wild carrot and greater burnet. I haven't grown these two native plants together before but absolutely love them; the way the burnet waves and bobs about in the wind is pure magic. Wild and wonderful!

Wild about my garden

I’ve just had a quick whip round my garden to pick a few flowers for a vase to cheer up a shelf in the hallway. It’s a hastily gathered bunch and I’m no great shakes at flower arranging but it does look very pretty with all the artless grace and freshness of early summer. Shining yellow buttercups, tall white willow herb, pink and white  campions, burnt orange fox and cubs, spires of purple toadflax and dog daisies, their faces turned up to the sun.
You’ll notice from the names that there’s nothing terribly exotic here, no hybridised and interbred garden flowers, in fact they are all common native flowers or very close relatives and no less lovely for that.

I enjoy having them in the garden even more than in the house, they are a perfect example of ‘the right plant in the right place’ perfectly suited to the conditions they’ve evolved in. Growing healthily and vigorously, full of flower and joie de vivre they are also full of pollen and nectar for the local insect population and importantly, a food source for bees.
We all know what a hard time bees are having now and how vital they are to our economy as well as our ecology, it’s a scary thought that we couldn’t grow many of our food crops without them but as gardeners there’s so much we can do to help.


Choosing flowers which are bee friendly, rich in pollen and nectar which is easily accessible to them isn’t difficult, lots of traditional ornamental garden flowers like Nepeta, Sedum, Aster, Anemone and Verbena are great but many wild flowers are even easier to grow and lovely to look at too, they are an essential part of my summer garden 





There are flowers arranged in flat topped bunches called umbels, like cow parsley, wild carrot and hogweed and daisies, big and small, are not single flowers they’re masses of tiny ones jam packed together in the centre of a circle of ray florets. These arrangements allow bees to eat and drink their fill within a small area, not wasting energy flying between widely spaced flowers.
Tubular shaped flowers like honeysuckle, foxgloves and clovers often grow close together in spires or ball shapes and are perfect for bees too, some like white clover are better for honey bees while bumble bees prefer red clover, apparently it’s all to do with the length of their tongues.

It isn’t just their wildlife benefit which makes wild flowers so valuable to my garden, or their lovely vibrant colours, it’s the combining and contrasting of their shapes which gives my garden its summer structure. Just like a flower arranger I can use their forms to create interest, harmony and balance.

No wonder they look so good in a vase!



‘Up close and personal’

It’s no coincidence that we find flowers the most beautiful part of a plant, the whole point of them is to be attractive, by their shape, colour and perfume. It is just about sex after all, their job is to get their pollinators to them by any means available and we find them irresistible too.
From breeding plants together to create ever bigger, brighter longer lasting blossoms to recording them in every possible way, we’ve endeavoured to make the most of their all too fleeting charms to keep them blooming for longer and record them for posterity.

From the Elizabethan ladies at their needlework and the Victorian amateur naturalist with his magnifying glass and watercolours to me and my daughter with our digital cameras competing for the best close up shots of my garden’s flowers, we’ve always felt the need to capture the moment, the peak of perfection of these most transient of beauties.

As a designer I spend much of my time exploring how colours, forms and shapes contrast or combine together, the composition of the whole picture being of more importance than the individual snapshots, but when it comes to flowers I’m just as seduced by them as anyone.
Each single flower is unique, it demands our full attention and the closer we look the more we see there is to appreciate. The subtleties and shadings of translucent colours, the variety of shapes as individual petals fuse or separate and just a sniff of the scent, in one intake of breath, can take us back years to a sun filled happy childhood and granny’s garden.

 
Of all the elements which combine to make a garden, flowers have always had the most meaning to us, that’s why this month when so many are at their most glorious and abundant we should take the time and trouble to really take a good look and appreciate our wild and garden flowers. 
Make the most of it, get out there, up close and personal. 

Design - Why bother?




Absolutely everything ‘man made’ that we use in our everyday lives, from knives and forks and tables and chairs, to the cars we drive and the houses we live in, have the origins of their form – the way they look, in their function – the thing they do.
In other words they have been designed to be fit for their purpose.
So why is it that still most of our gardens continue to just muddle along, bits of them occasionally changing piecemeal when the home changes hands and often it seems with very little real thought and consideration.

Take patios as an example. Most builders’ standard layout (sorry builders!) is a  rectangle of slabs along the back wall of the house regardless of its orientation, the material it’s made from or its age and style.
You might end up sitting shivering in the shade if it faces north on paving that looks just like all your neighbours’, it might be a lost opportunity, but at least it’s not a living thing and it won’t die by being in the wrong place.

Plants on the other hand could very well do just that if so little thought is put into their placing. Different plants need different conditions to thrive depending on their species origins. Some need full sun and well drained soil, maybe these came from the Mediterranean region or coastal sandy soils. Some need shade and deep humous rich soil, possibly woodland dwellers and others will need more moisture than the average coming first from the margins of streams and ponds.
Luckily most gardens can supply several conditions so we can accommodate plants with quite a range of different needs. By a north facing wall, instead of that paving , we could have Hosta and ferns, in the drier shade under a hedge or trees, Epimedium and Pulmonaria and on a sunny bank Lavander, Rosemary, Sage and Thyme.
By choosing plants which are best suited to them, we can use the opportunities these conditions give us to make the most of our gardens.
There’s a lot more to planting design than this of course but fundamentally it’s not about the latest plant fashion, at its heart it’s the it’s the combining of the right plants in the right places.
Our gardens are ‘man made’, and just as worthy of being made fit for purpose and designed with as much thought as anything else, so this spring when you go to the garden centre and buy some lovely new plants make sure that you’ve put some thought into the design of your planting first.

Why bother?  Just look at a well designed garden, it really is well worth it.




Measuring the changes in the seasons by breaking shoots and fattening buds is something all gardeners share. It’s the encouragement we need to remain optimistic as the chilly March winds blow . Winter is nearly behind us, spring just round the corner and then it will be summer with all its blissful flowery fullness.

If it stays cold and I need a bit of reassurance, then I go through photographs of gardens I’ve designed. They are usually taken in mid summer, preferably on a good day. After all, as well as a visual record for me, they are my shop window so I like to display the results of my designs at their sunny best.
They also give potential new clients faith and confidence in my abilities, knowing that the beautiful gardens they can see in them have grown and blossomed from the seeds of ideas developed and drawn up as plans.

It’s in this same spirit of confidence and faith in nature that we go out and buy packets of seed. It’s amazing to think that those tiny specks of dust and parcels of genetic material will become flamboyant silky headed poppies, shimmering white saucers of cosmos or sprawling nasturtiums. What incredible reward we get for such little effort and a bag of compost.

When it comes to growing vegetables it’s incredible value for money too. So easy to grow yet expensive to buy, runner beans are an absolute essential for me and one day I’m going to weigh the crop from one bean plant just to calculate the return on my investment in one bean seed.
My dad had even better value for his money, he always saved his bean seeds form one year to the next, driven as much by his ‘careful’ nature as the fashion of the time.

Gardens and plants are as prone to the whims of fashion as anything else we can be convinced to buy, but there’s one at the moment I’m all in favour of.
From the rise in popularity of vegetable growing it seems to be the current one and what a great way to use your patch of land.
Good for the body, good for the soul and good for the environment, as long as you garden organically of course.
It can’t be done with anything other than a spirit of optimism and I can’t think of any better way to prepare yourself and your garden for summer.




Brilliant birds!

This winter my garden has been an absolute delight, there’s been so much to look at I’ve hardly been able to drag myself away from the window. What has kept me there when I should have been doing other things is nothing directly horticultural but much more a result of the prolonged spells of cold weather and my investment in generous offerings of peanuts, bird seed and fat balls!

It’s been just like Autumnwatch, the number and variety of visiting birds over the winter has been exceptional, especially as my garden is on the edge of a housing estate.
For sheer size of wingspan in such an enclosed space the heron made the biggest impression and was the most surprising with a pair of pheasants strutting up the drive a close second.
Less of a surprise but just as welcome have been the passing fieldfares and redwings dropping in and lovely to see that the solitary thrush who’s been around for a while now has a mate and has overcome his shyness enough to hop down out of the tree onto the hanging bird table,
In terms of sheer numbers, the blue tits, great tits, sparrows blackbirds and starlings were the indisputable winners but the goldfinches brought all their relations, encouraged I think by the ‘mixed finch’ seed I splashed out on. This has also been a bit hit with a flock of beautiful apricot coloured bramblings, they first came in ones and twos with a group of chaffinches, then suddenly increased to at least ten, flitting about too much for an accurate count.

With such a number and variety of avian visitors it does seem churlish to complain about species I haven’t seen in my garden but I was very disappointed that the beautiful waxwings which were spotted on Goldwire Lane passed me by. Apparently they are attracted by large numbers of berries and although I can offer them hawthorn, sloe and guelder rose as well as the more exotic Crataegus prunifolia
(a hawthorn relative with marble sized orange berries still hold on in January) they were obviously not impressed.
If only I had a bigger garden I’d plant a rowan tree especially for them.

I’ve found from experience that attracting birds, like any other wildlife can be reasonably straightforward. Provide food, water and cover and if they’re in the area they’ll find the garden, but I have made some mistakes too. In the spring I split and moved a big Miscanthus grass whose seed heads had brought in reed buntings and linnets last winter, but it hated being moved, sulked and refused to flower so not only did I miss its striking winter silhouette, there were no reed buntings or linnets either this year.
Oh well, winter’s nearly over and longer hours of daylight bring the opportunity for more time outside and a bit of a revamp. Another Miscanthus will be top of the list and if only I had room for a rowan… I wonder how well one would grow in a pot!

Happy New Year




January the 1st right in the middle of winter, has always seemed to me to be a very unnatural time to choose for the start of a New Year. Much more in tune with nature’s rhythms is the vernal equinox in mid March, which is where New Year was before the Roman Julian calendar in 46BC. Quite a while ago I know although according to Google we British only really embraced the 1st of January date in 1752, not very long ago at all.
I’m still not convinced though, I’d much rather be able to see more evidence of new growth and renewal along with more clement weather and longer hours of daylight, March would be much better.
But the 1st of January it is and although cold and dark the snowdrops are pushing their pointy noses out of the chilly soil and some of the earlier Hellebore flower heads are full and fat and just about to burst.

One of my favourite cold weather flowers, winter aconites, are ready to pop up and make me smile with their bright sunny cups of flowers sitting just above the soil on their frilly ruff of green bracts. They always catch me by surprise by sprouting up overnight like mushrooms and as they’re soon over I’ve planted some by the front door to make sure I don’t miss them. Luckily the front door faces north and I brush all the dead leaves which the wind swirls around it onto their patch of soil in the hope that I’m fooling them into thinking they’re living in woodland under the canopy of deciduous trees, their favourite habitat.
Like lots of early flowering plants, they like woodland edge conditions, they’ve evolved to make the most of the light available while the trees are still bare of leaves.

The hedge at the bottom of my garden makes a perfect, if very short, edge of woodland. Beneath the hazel the deep summer shade is ideal for ferns and now the leaves are decaying gently beneath and the blackbirds and thrushes are busy poking through them, the bare branches are lined with rows of lengthening catkins, soon to be full of yellow pollen.
The Mahonia relishes the shade there too. It’s flowered its socks off all November and December and been a magnet for blue tits, maybe there are tiny insects sheltering in the sprays of flowers or maybe blue tits just like bright yellow.
It’s one of those ‘tough as old boots’ plants as are its companions in my garden, Cornus ‘Flaviramea’ with yellow and orange stems and a birch with bright white bark. They are all happy in my woodland edge with a big clump of Hellebores and a few snowdrops at their feet.
I put them together partly to emphasis their seasonal appeal but mainly because they like the conditions and so are happy to grow together there.
Happy plants, happy birds, happy garden, happy me. Maybe New Year in January isn't so bad after all!