The life and loves of a time-poor plantsman
If my blog did not already have a title, ‘The Diary of a Plant Addict’ would be a strong candidate. I’ve had the most horticulturally indulgent week one could imagine, starting with the Chelsea Flower Show and ending with a three day stretch getting my own garden in shape for summer. In the middle came […]
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O THE month of May, the merry month of May, So frolic, so gay, and so green, so green, so green! O, and then did I unto my true love say, Sweet Peg, thou shalt be my Summer’s Queen. Thomas Dekker (1572-1632) May is my favourite month, and I always say that if a […]
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How fortunate that my first visit to Sissinghurst this year should coincide with the warmest day of the spring so far. As the car bowled through the Weald of Kent the roads were fringed with sulphur-yellow catkins and golden daffodils, sparking beneath a clear blue sky. The greys and browns of winter had started […]
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How comforting – Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson had plant casualties. They were like the rest of us, after all. This amusing revelation comes thanks to The National Trust’s renewed efforts to restore some of the ebullience and gay abandon that Sissinghurst’s creators strived for when they were alive. Sissinghurst is getting real, and […]
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I embark on my review of 2014 with a degree of trepidation, as this year did not turn out to be quite as joyful as I hoped it might be. The two preceding years were gloriously packed with exotic travel and big events, so in hindsight 2014 was probably never going to live up to expectations. There have […]
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By late summer both of our plots have started to run out of puff, so I am always keen to seek out gardens which manage to keep up a good head of steam into autumn. Sissinghurst is open almost every day of the year and has to cope with hoards of garden-loving pilgrims expecting picture-book perfection. This makes it the […]
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Whether it’s candy floss, baby, lipstick or rose, when it comes to autumn flowering bulbs, shades of pink are decidedly de rigueur. Right now there are colchicums, schizostylis, crinums, cyclamen and nerines, all emerging blushing and bright when earlier flowers are starting to fade. Queen amongst these rubicund beauties is Amaryllis belladonna, a slightly tender bulb native to South Africa but […]
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I am guilty, guilty of having twice visited Sissinghurst this year and not having posted anything about it. Had this been any other garden I might have been forgiven, but on both occasions Sissinghurst was in its prime and more than worthy of sharing with you. I may still do so in the depths of winter when […]
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In case you haven’t noticed I am a sucker for anything colourful, exotic and expensive looking. This goes for food, cocktails, shirts, wallpaper and yes, plants too. I am a dreadful magpie, unable to resist the lure of anything bright or shiny. Hence it’s no wonder that the flame-like flowers of Lotus berthelotii, otherwise known […]
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Very little trumps the romanticism of a well-made woodland garden. Lush, informal and unbridled it will capture the heart in its quest to mimic nature. Every spring, plants which might never find themselves partnered in the wild mingle effortlessly in dappled shade, enjoying a fleeting glimpse of the heavens. To my mind the creation of a woodland garden is a […]
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