It’s the most exciting time of all in the garden, because everything’s responding to longer days and warmer temperatures. My Hartley greenhouse is a hive of activity because it’s full of seeds about to spring into life. It may be unheated, but it warms up brilliantly well on spring-like days and that encourages earlier germination. […]

I’m actually writing this on January 19th, a significant day in the gardening calendar. It’s the day when our part of the earth begins to warm up again. Scientists tell us that from that day onwards the ground starts to get warmer, due to the sun getting closer to our part of the Northern hemisphere. […]

When I started gardening, in the 1960s, the first thing I did was a parks and gardens inspired rose border containing twelve leggy hybrid teas of different colours. These unhealthy beasts lost most of their foliage by midsummer and they all flowered at slightly different times and at slightly different heights. However, my biggest crime […]

I’ve been picking up a lot of leaves lately, so many that when I close my eyes I see orange beech leaves in my subconscious. I even dream of orange beech leaves, because there are several mature beech trees close to Spring Cottage and they usually chose to drop their leaves on me. You can […]

In Homage to Shakespeare’s Sonnet 43 – “How do I love thee. Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of being and ideal grace. I love thee to the level of every day’s Most quiet […]

Gardeners love a September day, when morning mist and heavy dew give way to warm afternoon sunshine. It’s more than that though: the garden is bathed in a crystal clear light that flatters colour and there’s a relaxed air. No need to rush, the garden’s winding down and so am I. I always liken early […]

Pauline Quirke is a wonderful actress, and perhaps you saw her moving performance in Broadchurch playing Susan Wright, accompanied by her own Labrador Bailey. She’s more famous for Birds of a Feather and there’s a wonderful line about her missing husband, delivered with perfect comic timing, where she says that ‘Paul Daniels couldn’t put the […]

I had rather a large birthday recently, the sort you want to keep a deep, dark secret! I’ve seen a variety of gardening styles and, although I’m not quite old enough to remember Dig for Victory, I do remember the self-sufficient gardens of the 1950s, the low-maintenance shrub gardens of the 1960s, the conifers of […]

Myth and magic are woven through gardening, like multicoloured ribbons round a maypole. Folklore is handed down through the generations. My grandmother told me, quite explicitly, that potatoes must be planted on Good Friday and that leeks must have their roots trimmed, having learnt it from her father, little knowing that her ideas went straight […]

The wonderful thing about having a Hartley greenhouse is it allows you to go forth and propagate! Propagation appeals to me on so many levels. The Yorkshire part of my heritage admires the fact that I can raise plants for virtually nothing. The Christian enjoys the fact that this quote about ‘going forth and propagating’ […]

The Best Beloved and I are like chalk and cheese and I often wonder if there’s a mischievous sprite up above joining people in matrimony who are entirely unsuited. I’m all hustler-bustler and I get everything done as soon as it occurs to me. My mouth operates at the same speed. He ( on the […]

There is nothing quite like a home-grown, sun-warmed tomato picked fresh from the greenhouse and a fair few of mine never reach the table when the grandchildren are sent out to hunter gather! We grow lots of different types from cherry, to plum, to beefsteak, to medium-sized and round and, although we major on reds, […]