With work, gardening, friends and family, my life can quickly be filled with wonderful things but…
Garden chat
Photo gallery: Malibu’s unexpectedly exquisite wild flowers
I had planned to write a more detailed article about Malibu’s national parks and wildlife. However,…
From the streets: California
Chris and I have just come back from a trip to LA, Vegas and Malibu visiting…
Plantaholics Anonymous
[Warning: major plant geekage ahead] One of the best things to happen over the last year…
The liberation of education
This blog post was originally titled “education = better vegetation” but the new rhyme is more…
Spring-a-ling-a-ling
If you’re anything like me, you’ll be wondering how on earth it’s April when you thought…
Who died and made Lupins a ‘cottage garden’ plant?
It’s been niggling me for yonks: people calling Lupins “cottage garden” plants.
Let’s make green flowers our naughty little secret
There’s one thing I will guarantee right now: you are going to see many more green flowers…
And so, we fight
I recently learnt that one colony of our rare native Pasque flower, Pulsatilla vulgaris, was wiped out in 1992…
Will Apple images save planet Earth?
Over the last year I’ve been thinking of creating an app that uses people’s smartphone geolocation…
The best potatoes to grow
Last year I grew a set of seven different potato cultivars and only really liked one…
44 Future gardening moments of 2016
Future gardening is the phrase I use to describe my personal take on the world. Be forward…
Out of the shrubbery into the scrub
On Saturday 26th November 2016 the SGD hosted a conference about the use of shrubs in gardens.…
Have you ever changed your mind about a plant you hate?
We all have them, a list of plants we dislike. Yet every now and then something…
Designing for wildlife
This video is quite long but the presentation within it is important and well worth watching…
Our lives are not our own – Kennington Park, London
One of the joys of living in London, the forest city, is discovering one of its…
My latest victim
Yamadori is the Japanese word for collecting wild trees to grow as bonsai. Today, while rustling through…
Our inner city wildlife sanctuary
I grow our garden as much for wildlife as for design and plants. Wildlife adds many…
Living on a prairie (part 1)
This year I took on my allotment and I designated one bed for garden design experiments.…
Summer highlights in our garden
Our experimental garden is now in its third year with lots to fix but standing back…
Thompson & Morgan Trial Field Visit
Michael Perry invited me and a group of other gardening bloggers to have a tour of…
Does peat free compost work?
Between 2015- 2016 I put peat free compost to the ultimate test, I only used peat…
Form factor – our garden in June 2016
The best thing I’ve added to our border this year (I think so far) is Nicotiana…
Wild orchid hunting
My friend Pete Langley took me to a secret location on the South Downs one sunny…
24 Things at the Chelsea Flower Show 2016
This is my third year at the Chelsea Flower Show and it remains an emotional experience.…
7 Trends at RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2016
I’ll have more blog posts this week with my photos and thoughts from the Chelsea Flower…
11 Realities of Gardening in London
Either I’m inexplicably inept at gardening, or living in the big smoke is providing a world…
Tulips, planting out tomatoes early and seedlings
Tulips: the last two years I’ve tried growing some tulips and it went horribly wrong. Especially…
PHOTO GALLERY: Barbican Conservatory, London
Brutalist, futurist. Despite the concrete, the Barbican exudes such atmosphere and style that you’ll feel as…
Dahlia experiment: cultivars put to the test!
In late 2013 I discovered Dahlias. As unbelievable as that might sound to gardeners who have grown…
Pot’s Growing On in January: indoor plants, seed catalogues and preparation
January is the time to get organised, wash pots carefully to kill nasties, enjoy browsing the…
Top 6 Best Bee Magnet Flowers of 2015
One of my top priorities for 2015 was to have a garden grown as a nature reserve,…
All hail Helleborus niger leaves!
Back at the start of 2014, when my love of gardening ignited and shot off like…
8 tips for buying a Christmas tree
Christmas trees are brilliant. However the way they are sold can be a bit wasteful, cost…
A reason why the London Garden Bridge might be a good thing
The London Garden Bridge is fairly hotly debated. On the face of it, a tree lined…
Solenostemon scuttelarioides (aka Coleus)
Victorian’s freakin’ loved a lot of plants. They thought plants were cool. Because plants are cool.…
One amazing gardening year
Warning: look away now if you don’t want to read self-reflective pointless twaddle. Exactly a year…
National Dahlia Society Annual Show 2015 & RHS Dahlia Trials
I returned to the National Dahlia Society’s Annual Show today after being totally gobsmacked last year. Though…
Ferns at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh
I’ve gone fern mad – I don’t even know how it happened. This weekend, on my…
Fuzzy buzz: heuchera think you are?
How cool is this little fella? Buzzin around. Couldn’t get enough of the Heucheras. Cheeky tube…
Designer Edibles 1: Peas (Pisum sativum ‘Meteor’)
I’m on a mission to grow as many different species and varieties of plants as possible…
Brunnera macrophylla ‘Mr Morse’
The plants are still small (they’ve seriously been through the wars after arriving near death!), so…
Big Dreams, Small Spaces: Victorian inspiration
Driven by a renewed love of plants and a brain being filled with RHS knowledge, in…
Dividing a Zamioculcas zamiifolia (ZZ plant)
I’ve had a Zamioculcas zamiifolia for some years now. In the last year, I found the…
Urban Legends: Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward, inventor of the Wardian Case
Today I discovered we live only 3 minutes walk away from the last residence of one of…
Gardens: a science experiment we can all try
You know what, the Victorians got it right. Curiosity, discovery, understanding the unknown, adventure!
10 favourite plants of 2014
It’s the last day of 2014 and I’ve been really interested in plants this year (no…