My slippery descent into gardening began by taking ‘Prickly Pear’ cuttings, from Kew Gardens, while I was still at prep school. After a horticulture degree, with placements in historic gardens, and two decades making gardening telly, I’ve come full circle and returned to being a West Dorset sole gardener.
Since getting a dog who turned out to be completely gun-shy, petrified by any sort of explosion, November is the month heralded by a period of great wailing and gnashing of teeth—his and mine! I’m sure, when I was a Read more »
With luck October can yield a good many days upon which gardening is positively joyful. Not so cold that you have to be cocooned in many layers of restrictive clothing and yet not so hot that any degree of physical Read more »
For a little while last month I was forced to adopt my ‘emergency hot weather’ gardening mode. This involves early starts, with late finishes, in order to carry out watering tasks before the sun is too fierce and also so Read more »
There may be a bit of a lull this month as early summer flowers come to an end and late season contributors haven’t quite built up a head of steam. Regular dead-heading extracts the maximum performance from plants which produce Read more »
As I write this the weather is generally wet and, for ‘flaming’ June, fairly cold. Having passed the longest day, for me, a certain panic sets in that we’re not going to get a ‘proper’ summer this year but, from Read more »
I can’t believe we’re getting on for almost half way through the year—time really does fly in the garden. Although we had a relatively mild winter, with hardly a frost, the heavy rain in early spring, which made the waterlogged Read more »
May in the garden Russell Jordan May is so full of life and rising sap that it’s easy to feel that almost anything is possible. Fundamentally it’s when the risk of frost is over and your tender plants can Read more »
Blossom abounds on boughs and below. Flowering cherries come into their own, as do other spring flowering trees, and now is a good time to choose one in flower so that you can see exactly how frilly and overblown it Read more »
If plants ruled the world, and it would be a more harmonious place if they did, then March would be a logical point to pick as the first month in the calendar. The longer days, with correspondingly warming soils, have Read more »
It’s been a pretty wet winter so far so, perverse as it may seem, I actually would like it to get really cold and dry for February and well into March. If December and January had supplied plenty of cold, Read more »