There’s not much that January is good for, apart from cosying-up by the fire, drinking the Christmas drinks cabinet dry and browsing seed catalogues. The minute New Year is over, hot off the press, brochures start to arrive at The Watch House by the sack-load.…
January is a unique month in the year when plants, on the whole, demand very little from gardeners. House plants are an exception, but even these have minimal needs when light levels are low and days are short. January is the perfect month for gardeners…
Although I find growing from seed one of the most rewarding aspects of gardening, I have done so less and less in recent years. It’s partly down to space, and partly down to the requirement to be present during those critical days when tender…
In a series of posts over the coming weeks I’m going to be looking at what the seed merchants and nurseries have in store for gardeners in 2016. Usually by late November I have put both gardens to bed and venture outside only to clear…
Mirabilis jalapa: marvel of Peru, four o’clock flower, tea-time plant It’s been an extraordinary weekend for gardening. The weather has been warm, dry and still; not a cloud in the sky from when the sun rose on Saturday morning until it set on Sunday evening.…
Yesterday, after several abortive attempts, I finally managed to drag Him Indoors to Derry Watkins’ Special Plants Nursery at Cold Ashton, near my home town of Bath. Although Derry’s nursery is tucked half way down a steep hill below the village it’s evident that the…
Regular readers may already have noticed that I am sucker for a subtropical plant. On a cold Sunday in February, whilst visiting London’s Chelsea Physic Garden, I found myself drawn in by the the scented warmth of one particular glasshouse, that which holds the garden’s collection of rare and…
How often do we subscribe to organisations or take out memberships and yet fail to take full advantage of them? I have been signed up to the Royal Horticultural Society for almost 20 years, and the National Trust for longer (having joined at birth, obviously), but…
Just after Christmas we popped over to Whitstable for a spot of Champagne and shopping with our friend Karen. Situated on the Thames estuary, Whitstable’s beaches are shingly rather than sandy, their tide-rounded bounty stoutly defended by rank after rank of sturdy groynes. As the sun lowered we…
Tonight I am greatly in need of a happy pill. The best I can muster from the depths of the medicine cabinet is a dusty asprin and some anti-acid tablets, so as an alternative I am resorting to the best therapy of all, looking at…
