Mention wildlife to most gardeners and they will go gooey eyed over hedgehogs, Jenny wrens and thrushes. However, their survival relies on complex food webs involving creatures that gardeners aren’t quite a keen on! Hedgehogs, for instance, have small mouths and a snout, so their preferred foods during the summer months are beetles, caterpillars and […]

The darkest days of the year find me in limbo land, because the garden’s largely hibernating. There are snowdrop tips everywhere, a promise of things to come. The witch hazel buds hang in the air, like tiny fists in snuff-brown gloves, but soon their marmalade strands will break free and flow. For now, I’m reduced […]

I spend a great deal of time in my study. Many a time I sit there wishing I was in the garden instead of being tied to my screen, metaphorically speaking. However, when I get a whole day in the garden the weather sometimes lets me down. A few days ago, it lashed down for […]

It’s that time of year. The garden’s winding down and most of my roses have finished for the year so there are very few to pick for the house. I’ve already reduced the top growth of most by a third, to prevent the wind from rocking the plant about and creating a gaping hole above […]

Lots of people in horticulture will have very fond memories of out late Queen Elizabeth, including the staff and management of Hartley Botanic. Her late Majesty adored going to the Chelsea Flower Show and Hartley are regular attendees. I particularly remember her visit in 2012, the year of the Diamond Jubilee, because an entire military […]

Gardeners are used to battling the elements, but 2022 has been a catastrophic event. It began with an ‘I’m-not-going-to-grow-for-you-at-the-moment’ dry winter and cool spring. That was followed by extreme heat and strong Saharan winds, so most people’s gardens (including mine) turned into a sea of brown. One evening I sat and watched as hummingbird-hawk moths […]

Gardening is satisfying in so many ways and it develops some desirable personality traits – such as generosity, patience and perseverance – although some would say I’m a work in progress! You’re likely to be in tune with nature, if you garden, and that helps your humility because most gardeners realise that they’re not in […]

Diva or dependable? That is the question… As many of you know I’m wedded to my garden, my little corner of paradise in the Cotswolds. In late spring and summer, my sixty or so peonies open and the brashest of all is a lemon-yellow Itoh peony named ‘Bartzella’. The huge, flouncy flowers have led the […]

There’s only one thing I’d like more than my Hartley greenhouse – and that’s another one! And this year my need has been even greater following a dry winter and cool spring – for nothing has grown quite as well as it should. We’re approaching summer, but I still have a traffic jam worthy of […]

I regret to say that I only have a modest, unheated Hartley greenhouse, although I fantasise about bigger and better on an almost daily basis. However, my greenhouse serves me well in every season, despite its size, because it captures precocious warmth and sunlight. The air inside is often degrees warmer in winter and early […]

I like a touch of wilderness in my gardens and I often try to analyse why, after all I’m not a country lass by definition. I always tell people that I was born under the gas tower in Southall – not literally you understand. I have to stop trotting this out though for Southall’s gas […]

I often ask myself, why I’m a gardener. The answer’s somewhat mundane. I was a twin and we shared a small bedroom in a terraced house. We had entirely different personalities because we were fraternal, rather than identical twins My twin brother was the beautiful one. He got the curly golden hair, the navy-blue eyes […]