Posts on cottage garden plants
Six shrubs to fill up a sparse garden
Easy to grow shrubs – clematis, honeysuckle, sweet box, pyracantha, kerria, and mahonia.
Six self-seeders on a Saturday
Lovely self-seeders show how plants will grow and thrive without us having to do any gardening at all
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
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
Apple tree transparent pruning – great results
In a previous post I described how expert pruner Posy Gentles tackled our tangled old apple tree to improve its look and health. Here it is before the pruning Posy specialises in transparent pruning, also known as French pruning, which aims to create as much air and light in the canopy of a tree as
London Cottage Garden boundaries – changing brown to green
I’ve taken this picture standing at the back door. This is the whole garden and it measures 11 metres long by 6 metres wide. We look out onto it from our conservatory kitchen/living area all year round. I thought I would describe what is planted in the garden, starting at the edges with the fences
Cottage gardening jobs – to do or not to do
A garden right now is speeding into growth and doesn’t wait for anyone. Nature will grow with or without us. Every magazine and TV programme is crammed with jobs to do – things to be done – busy busy bees in the garden. We all know how impossible it is to sit with a
Snowdrops in the green – what does it mean?
Snowdrops are flowering now and now is also the time to plant new ones. Here I show you what planting them in the green means and those I planted have come up very well this year.
The cottage garden turns from Winter to Spring
So here is the garden on the second day of a new gardening year. The front: and the back: Some pots have permanent planting: grasses, catmint, hardy geraniums, honeysuckle; just one plant per pot. The rest have only tulips, new ones put in each year. My daffodils are all in the borders. You can see
Pruning our old apple tree
Our lovely old apple tree had previously been pruned so hard that it now had a tangled mass of new vertical shoots. It was dense, cast too much shade, and hadn’t produced many apples for years. I called in an expert pruner called Posy Gentles who specialises in transparent pruning of trees and shrubs. www.posygentles.co.uk She
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