Six on a Saturday
One My beehive shaped compost bins got completely emptied this week and had produced about 15 bags of fantastic brown crumbly stuff, full of worms and little creatures. Every handful was teeming with life. I filled up my pots, chucked it all around the garden and spread it deep on new areas for planting. Making
Six snapshots of Spring bulbs on a Saturday
Six photographs from Spring last year to get us in the mood for bulb planting this autumn:- I start with snowdrops coming up which you can read about here The first burst of colour comes from the early narcissi. Some are in the borders permanently and some I put in pots. When they are over I
Six shrubs to fill up a sparse garden
If you find yourself with a garden which looks empty, here are some shrubs which will fill it up with colour and scent quickly and easily. Leycesteria formosa, also known as Himalayan honeysuckle, can be planted anywhere sunny and it will put on several feet of new growth in Spring. It’s fun to look
Six self-seeders on a Saturday
This week I was in Rutland for two days and took photos of some authentic cottage gardens, but not so much the gardens as the road verges in front of the cottages where plants had self-seeded and created a lovely natural jumble in the tiny space between the wall and the pavement. Here are
Six delights on a Saturday
This baby robin kept me company the whole afternoon just inches from my hands as I gently worked in the border. Our cat slept on the car bonnet and ignored the birds (which luckily he always does.) Here I love the way the Virginia creeper is decorating the cat flap This trachelospermum has, without
Six on a Saturday: tips for not feeling overwhelmed by the cottage garden style
Having the cottage garden style involves a lot of gardening. Don’t imagine it doesn’t. This year it seems more than ever. I can often feel overwhelmed trying to keep on top of the jumble. Perennials can turn from glorious to spent in a matter of days. So I am having some ideas about how
Cottage garden plants for late summer colour from Chenies Manor Plant Fair – July 16th 2017
This one-day annual plant fair at Chenies Manor House and Garden near Amersham, Bucks, is one of the best in the gardening year. There were about 70 independent nurseries selling plants. There are no display gardens, and the few non-plant stalls include plant supports, info about bees and honey, antique garden tools and some garden
Inspiration for cottage gardening at Belmont Gardens, Kent
Entering Belmont Gardens in Kent I had the opportunity to walk alongside the Head Gardener and I could sense that here was a man who loved his work and the garden. This gave me the feeling that I was going to like this place. My hero Dan Pearson talks about a “sense of place” by which I
What can Great Dixter inspire in my London Cottage Garden?
This blog is about what I can take from a visit to the world famous garden at Great Dixter near Rye in East Sussex. I had been twice before over the years but this trip was part of a group tour taking in eight famous gardens in Kent and East Sussex. I won’t even begin
Jasmine – a wonderful cottage garden climber
In a previous blog I showed how I had neglected to hack back the jasmine on our fence which was now a huge tangle. The perennials underneath were struggling to get some light. I thought I’d made a mistake in not reducing its size in early spring. However, as I sit in the garden this
Winter and Spring jobs left undone lead to problems in Summer
On April 1st I wrote a blog about all the jobs I wasn’t going to bother doing and how I was going to just sit in the garden and read the paper. Well that did turn out to be a joke because April 2nd saw me on my hands and knees weeding and I haven’t
Bee friendly plants – the top mail order choices from rosybee nursery
Having bought mail order plants from rosybee.com nursery and been impressed with their quality, I contacted Rosi Rollings and went to visit her at her nursery near Wantage in Oxfordshire. Rosi is so interested in providing plants for bees that she has planted a research bed with square metres of each plant she wants to