The elements just keep on giving this year. In the space of three months we’ve had record cold and record heat; now record rainfall, at least in some parts of the […]
Category: Wild Flowers
The Best Things in Life are Free
I have largely avoided being drawn into snowdrop mania this year. I have no snowdrops in my garden (which is a pity and ought to be rectified) and have had precious […]
Hampton Court Flower Show 2017 – The Show Gardens: Brownfield Metamorphosis
I’m very aware that I am not opening my Hampton Court coverage with classically beautiful gardens. In my quest to offer the fullest overview possible, I rarely get around to detailing my favourites, which […]
Chelsea Flower Show 2017: Best in Show – The M&G Garden
Well slap my thigh and call me Mildred, James Basson won gold and landed this year’s Best in Show for his monumental Maltese quarry garden. Gold was, as I predicted, inevitable, and Best in […]
My Favourite Walk: Chapel Porth Valley, St Agnes
I have been walking down and up the valley to Chapel Porth for over forty years. Not continually, of course, but at least once or twice a year and frequently more. Without question […]
Wonder Walls Part II
Each time I return to the West Country I am reminded just how damp it is compared to Kent. A crude comparison of averages would tell you that twice as much rain falls in […]
Book Review: “Daffodil: Biography of a Flower”
“I’m always pleased to see a daffodil” confesses Oxford University botanist Dr Robert Scotland to the author of this new account of the ubiquitous spring flower. With those seven words he speaks for a […]
