Towards the middle of the month, you won’t be able to escape from the pumpkin! They’ll be festooned outside shops everywhere and, by the end of October, they’ll be blackened by candle soot and perched limply on walls, following the Halloween revels. We think of this festival as an American custom. However the tradition of making […]

One of the glorious things about gardening is that you’re always thinking ahead, so I’m dreaming about the glories of next year just as the garden begins to fade. I’m planning to grow sweet peas again, because they are the ultimate cut and come again flower. Just a few stems on the kitchen table fragrance […]

One of the great things about owning a Hartley greenhouse is the sense of escape in a modern world fraught with difficulty. It’s like your own miniature TARDIS and when you walk down the garden path and through the door you’re lost in another world. It doesn’t matter about the vagaries of the British climate […]

The best thing about having a Hartley greenhouse, especially in the sort of summer we seem to be having, is that you can get away from the weather. This year my peonies were washed away in mid-June and then my roses took a real battering at the end of the month. In fact I’ve never […]

A good garden should shine throughout the year and it should also provide plenty of nectar from early spring until late autumn. This is the time of year to think about late-flowering plants, because many of them come from the southern hemisphere, particularly South America. Flowers tend to be pigment packed, with plenty of reds, […]

I always get wisteria envy at this time of year, because it’s one climber I don’t seem to be able to find the right place for. I’ve planted two in my lifetime and the first one was in a Northamptonshire garden in the late 1980s. I recently went back for a peek and it’s now […]

I do love plants with silvery foliage, the trouble is they’re difficult in Cold Aston because we get a lot of rainfall dumped upon us and silvery plants hate wet. They would much rather grow on thin soil in places like East Anglia – where rainfall is far lighter. However I’ve developed an area, underneath […]

I apologise if you’re a Daphne, but Daphnes are capricious creatures. However I’m not talking people, I’m talking plants. These gloriously scented, shrubby plants, designed for hedonsists as well as gardeners, cast a special sort of magic and they’re an essential part of my garden. However,  just when they’re at their best, they’re likely to […]

If there’s one plant that makes April special in my garden it’s Erythronium californicum  ‘White Beauty’. The creamy flowers have six upturned petals that fly outwards to form a wide lily shape. Seen from above the petals display a cool hint of green as they meet the stem, catching the same glint of green found in the […]

One of the earliest flowers I ever encountered was the magnolia. I spent my childhood in Ealing in West London, then known as the Queen of the Suburbs. It was full of Victorian villas and practically every front garden had a tall magnolia with tulip-shaped, pale-pink flowers in spring. These rose into the air to […]

One of the first things I did when I moved to Cold Aston, some fourteen years ago, was to plant five fruit trees. I chose three apples and two pears, but I’ve had far more success with apples than pears. You see, apples cope well with my chilly conditions and we’ve been eating ‘Pitmaston Pine-apple’ […]

There’s no question about it. I have too many hellebores in my garden. I know this is true because the famous nurseryman, Bob Brown, once came to my garden and exclaimed in basso profundo “too many hellebores Val.” The late Christopher Lloyd, of Great Dixter, went even further and called people like me helle-bores. Fortunately […]