I have been writing about gardens and plants for over 30 years and, when I started, most garden writing was purely practical. Writers explained how to grow it, where to plant it and, typically, you’d get dig a hole one foot deep in a sunny place and then do this and that. It made me […]

February Fill Dyke has certainly lived up to its name this year! It’s traditionally one of the wetter months, averaging between 50mm and 100mm of rainfall, up to three inches in old money.  This year I know that we’ve had far more, because the accurate Met Office rain gauge my husband so thoughtfully gave me […]

You might think of Simon Cowell when I mention the X Factor, but I’m talking about hybrids that arise when two plants hybridise. Usually, it’s the bees that do all the work. They travel between flowers searching for nectar for energy and protein-rich pollen for breeding. As they go, they accidentally transfer pollen from one […]

I am spending every moment I possibly can in the garden and every second is precious because the days are getting shorter and shorter. If it’s sunny I have to come in before the sun sinks towards the low horizon and blinds me, so I’m under time pressure when I’m cutting back, tidying and leaf […]

It’s the first Monday in November and it’s damp, mild and grey. I’ve just been for my usual ten-minute garden recce before I start writing for the day. The borders are covered in beech leaves and more are slowly helter-skeltering downwards despite the brisk breeze. This year the beech leaves are the colour of golden […]

I speak to groups of gardeners on a regular basis and, whenever I mention grasses to the audience, there’s a sort of nervous silence, an air of suspicion even. It seems that some gardeners see grasses as a malevolent presence and I can sort of understand why. In the 1970s – yes – I am […]

At this time of year, as summer gives way to autumn, there are glimmers of bright red beginning to appear. The string of black bryony berries, winding their way over the hedges down the lane, are as gaudy as Edna Everage’s highly lacquered spectacles. Tamus communis, our only native member of the yam family, is […]

August, a word defined as ‘inspiring reverence, admiration, dignity and grandeur’ in the dictionary, does not really define this late-summer month at all. Most gardens are tired and lacklustre and especially so in drought-stressed 2025. The subdued summer flourish has been and gone and the autumnal cavalcade is still waiting in the wings. And I’m […]

Midsummer’s here and the garden’s struggling, due to the hottest June since 1976. I remember 1976, with mixed feelings. I was pregnant with my youngest daughter Zoe, having had my oldest one in July 1975 in equally scorching weather. In fact, I have history with high temperatures, because my mother always said (through slightly gritted […]

Most gardens peak in June and I was reminded of the fact when I had to take a sudden detour due to a closed road. There were five of us in the car and it was a glorious June evening and we found ourselves meandering through the villages along the River Windrush towards Burford in […]

At the beginning of May I was extremely lucky to be invited to see the gardens at Worcester College in Oxford’s city centre. It was a perfect May afternoon and the stone walls were dripping with wisteria, so the timing couldn’t have been more perfect. The lawns were like green velvet and I’m sure that […]

It has been a glorious spring, with cloudless sunny day after sunny day. The lovely Tomasz Schafernaker, the BBC weatherman and self-taught artist, announced each sparkling day with a twinkle in his eye. Well, for the first two weeks anyway. And then he began to look a bit more apologetic, shifty even, about the lack […]