Add the frosty nights of late February to soil that’s still sodden after the winter rain and it may not be until the middle of the month that the soil in your vegetable garden is warm enough to sow early crops. However, this should not stop you from preparing the seedbed, by raking the ground […]

A cool frost free glasshouse is perfect for this house plant from the Mediterranean loved since Classical times. Cyclamen is the original Greek, name for this genus of a dozen or so native to Europe and North Africa. One of the Primrose family these have bulbous corm like tubers, masses of remarkably attractive variegated leaves, […]

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 […]

Surely it’s too much to hope that carnivorous plants – which grow in sphagnum bogs – could be grown without peat? No: dream on… Every once in a while, the dreams that so much of our gardening springs from come true. This abysmal, wonky winter, where I’m lashed almost daily by iced rain, and jostled […]