Posts under ‘grow this’

Image by Michiteru Kodama.
Chaenomeles x superba ‘Crimson and Gold’ likes to lie low in the garden. It creeps up to you in early spring and shouts ‘I’m flowering! Pay me attention!’ And you do. Soldier-red flowers with regal gold stamens make you sit up and look. And so do the enormous, fragrant and edible (if [...]

Every so often, I like to snuggle up under a big warm duvet and watch a very silly girly film. When I did that last weekend, I had an extra-special treat as I had some strawberry popcorn kernels from Victoriana Nurseries. so I made myself some sweet popcorn, and settled down for film night.

Double form pink picotee Helleborus x hybridus
This month we’re collecting gorgeous hellebores from Ashwood Nurseries. The way hellebores hybridise makes it very difficult for the nurseries to give each cultivar a name, so you’ll find these plants labelled by shape and colour. And nursery owner John Massey has kindly shared his tips for growing hellebores [...]

Image by sighnensis.
Do you love snowdrops? How about a snowdrop tree? It sounds too good to be true doesn’t it?
Native to North America and notoriously difficult to propagate Halesia diptera ‘Magniflora’, commonly known as the snowdrop tree, is quite rare and makes an extremely beautiful, if rarely seen, specimen plant. It can be [...]

Image by Michiteru Kodama.
I know I’ve picked some rather well-known Plants to Love for February, but I just couldn’t resist gushing about my favourite spring plants. In case you feel I’ve let you down, here’s a real beauty that not many people have heard of. The Paper Bush (Edgeworthia chrysantha) takes a little bit of [...]

Image by Sharon.
How fabulous - a white forsythia. Abeliophyllum distichum is a beautiful, far more refined late winter-flowering shrub, with almond-scented white star-shaped flowers that blush pink at the centre. Like its yellow-flowered relative Forsythia, it flowers profusely on bare branches in February, although it often beats true forsythia to the first bloom.

Image by Anne Tanne
I’ve chosen quite a few shy plants for February’s Six Plants to Love. I always think there’s something quite classy about a plant that just creeps quietly out to meet you. Woodland anemones fall into this group. Even though they don’t shout ‘Oi, I’m flowering, look at me!’, a carpet of them [...]

Image by Didier Bier
Daphne is another winter-flowering shrub that smells yummy scrummy. And it looks gorgeous as well, bringing lovely warm purple flowers into your garden when everything else hasn’t even started waking up.

Image by Anne Tanne
This is the spring perennial. I don’t care if every single person reading this site has already heard of the sweet violet: it is the most beautiful, most delicate and most welcome spring plant. I love seeing it carpeting flower beds at this time of year, with its little heart-shaped leaves and [...]

Anyone who has been reading this blog for more than a couple of weeks will realise I really, really love comfrey. It is probably the most important plant in an organic garden, especially if you are growing vegetables. I love comfrey because it means I don’t have to buy any fertilisers, because it perks up [...]

Image by Anne Tanne
A swathe of crocuses spreading slowly across a lawn is one of the best sights of spring. It’s a cheer-up, wake-up, and get-into-the-garden sight. I’ve always had a difficult relationship with many spring bulbs: sometimes their violent pastel shades strike me as a bit naff, but I love an enormous clump of [...]

Last year I grew sweet pea ‘Matucana‘ all over willow obelisks in my garden. I’ve always had an awkward relationship with sweet peas: some of the colours remind me of thermal vests, and I used to think them an old lady plant.
That all changed when a good friend of mine picked me some from her [...]

Snowdrop ‘Lady Elphinstone’
Some plants are everywhere. Everyone knows what they are, and most people love them. But that doesn’t mean you should settle for the bog standard variety that everyone grows. Digging deeper into a genus reveals real gems: plants that truly stand out from the crowd. Every month, the Collector’s Item will bring you [...]

Image by Virole Bridee
Why do we always think of orchids as houseplants from the tropics? Lady’s slipper orchid (Cypripedium calceolus) is a terrestrial orchid that rivals any tropical species. It’s sad to think that in recent times it was nearly lost to the history books here in the UK when over-collecting and destruction of habitats [...]

Image by Anne Tanne
The woman who planned my childhood garden was one of the best designers I ever encountered. There are too many clever things she did to list here, but one of my favourites was the Viburnum x bodnantense ‘Dawn’ that she planted by the gate. Every morning in winter as I left for [...]