The garden is a work in progress, well more work than progress if I’m honest, but I slid into summer a few days ago when I cut most of my tulips back in my rose and peony beds and planted several different cosmos I’d raised in 4 x 6 modular trays. The change was remarkable […]

I’ve always been interested in bees and thirty years ago I took part in a red-tailed bumblebee (Bombus lapidarius) study in an attempt to map their presence. I was a lot younger then and I sprinted over walls and chased up and down dale trying to find their nests in rural Northamptonshire, with limited success. […]

I had an interesting childhood in multicultural London and I was the only girl for all the other family members of my own age were chaps, either brothers or cousins. It has had its advantages. I know all the fielding positions in cricket and I can explain the off-side rule in football. In fact I’ll […]

Gardening is good for the soul, everybody says so, but greenhouse gardening is the equivalent of a luxury spa treatment for you and your plants, where you are cosseted against the worst of the weather. A cool spring day, one that makes you tighten your scarf and shudder, suddenly becomes thoroughly pleasant. No wonder I […]

I have it on good authority that I have “too many hellebores” because Bob Brown (a nurseryman with a strong resemblance to Father Christmas) told me so the last time he came to my garden. I tend to agree, although I didn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing that. I’ve acquired more since – of […]

It may be drear outside at the moment, but the great thing about gardening is that you’re always looking forward. So it’s already summer in my head for I have just received some new dahlia tubers in the post. They may look like shrivelled brown things now, packed in plastic bags full of flyaway vermiculite, […]

Being a writer does sometimes feel as though you’re under house arrest and I know I’m not alone. A rare lunch in Oxford, with a dozen or so other writers, was summed up by one as “stepping out of our usual writer’s isolation for a couple of hours.” Ours though is nothing as opposed to […]

Having a lovely greenhouse may not have worked out quite the way I’d like. As you may know ( from previous griping) the Best Beloved has filled it with edibles – sweet peppers, tomatoes and aubergines mainly. However I do manage to reclaim some space for my twenty or so nerines and they produce spectacular […]

I get a succession of visitors to Spring Cottage and it’s rather like revealing a glimpse of your soul. My last one was young and had olive skin, golden eyes and the sort of Italian accent women dream of. A garden designer, who actually knew his plants, he adored minimalist gardens with simple green schemes […]

A famous quote by Coco Chanel, the French fashion designer, says that “you get the face you deserve when you’re fifty” – a milepost I passed sometime ago. Thankfully I’m one of life’s enthusiasts who can see the funny side of almost everything. I wake at dawn, wanting to tear into the day, and I’m […]

It’s cold in Cold Aston, high up in The Cotswolds, and it’s quite possible to get four seasons all in one day throughout the year. And that’s a good reason for having a greenhouse for a sheet of glass between you and the elements can make the world of difference up here. My cold eyrie […]