I can’t remember a more difficult year, gardening wise, than this one! I have arms that stretch down to my knees, or that’s what it feels like, because I have carried countless heavy cans to keep my Daphnes, witch hazels and moisture-loving ferns alive. Or should I say, hopefully alive! You can’t water everything and […]

As summer slides towards autumn, there’s a group of plants that are still flowering their socks off. The daisies. and I don’t mean lawn daisies, I mean the whole extended family. And that’s the thing about plant families, they really are a miss mash of all the second cousins, the barmy aunt, plus a few […]

In the greenhouse the tomatoes are fully into their stride, but there are more yellow leaves than green ones, and the whole place smells of ripe fruit and earthiness. This is the moment I start thinking about what might come next – it is such a precious space and it needs to be used well […]

This delightful mound of feathery green foliage and cheerful golden yellow flowers will decorate your greenhouse or conservatory and has without doubt one of the most misleading names in geo-horticulture. Palm Springs is in Southern California and not so named until the middle of the 19th century. The infamous eponymous resort was not founded until […]

As our climate breaks down and food security is threatened, we need a new, bottom-up approach to local food-growing that will also knit our fraying society back together. We’re hitting the ecological buffers – hard. Five exhausting heatwaves, with record-breaking high temperatures; life-threatening wildfires (some in unlikely, urban places); wild life, from plants to animals, […]

Are yellow flowers in the garden mellow or enough to make you bellow? Jean Vernon explores the yellow effect We call it mellow yellow, but when it comes to flowers in the garden, yellow blooms are sometimes rejected and overlooked. But why? Yellow sometimes suggests sickness, possibly associated with bile and is also associated with […]

Gardening is so much more than digging holes, plonking plants in and weeding. Take fragrance for instance. It nourishes the soul and lifts the spirits and all you have to do is breathe in deeply through the nose. When I come up my garden path on. A summer’s day, I pass a mass of border […]

Lotus tetragonolobus is delightful, easy and looks unusual, making a good ‘talking point’ to engage children’s attention. The foliage is attractive, almost geometrical in a curious way and has the rare habit of closing each evening (presumably to avoid cold night skies or browsing by night time critters such as molluscs). The flowers are recognisably […]

Although my greenhouse is currently a monoculture of tomatoes – a good year for them, by any standards, all of this heat has been incredible for them if made them almost impossibly thirsty – it is empty of all of the plants that filled it earlier in the year. They of course now fill the […]

As your garden greenery makes that summer shift from abundant to unruly, make the problem the solution with an on-the-spot mulch. I’d had enough. After time away (planned and unplanned), a first heatwave that forced plants to grow like billy-o, being poorly – vertigo and spring-into-summer gardening do not mix – and then a second […]

What’s lurking among the plants in your greenhouse? Jean Vernon explores the mini-beasts that may call your greenhouse home. Our greenhouses are often isolated from the rest of the garden and removed from the natural balance. That said, we know there are all sorts of creatures that find their way into the protected climes inside […]

They say the sixties are now the forties these days, when it comes to age, because many ‘oldies’ are keeping healthy and active for far longer. I count myself as an oldie, very much so, but I hardly ever stop because I have a garden and an allotment to contend with. This year it’s been […]