Helen

Bumbling on…

Ho Humm. Here’s yet another reason why we should shun dizzy annual bedding plants – particularly those boring little red begonias and busy lizzies (or is that bizzy lusies?). According to an email I recieved last week, bumblebees don’t like them because they have little nectar on offer. And did you know that the various bumblebee species differContinue reading “Bumbling on…”

Posies of roses and other allotmenty things

Roses in my garden are so much part of the over all picture that I am reluctant to pick them. I have planted some Hybrid Musks (Penelope and Buff Beauty) and a couple of Rosa glaucas and a Rosa chinensis mutabilis, a gloriously scented velvety deepest-crimson old shrub (‘Charles de Mills’) some Rugosas and aContinue reading “Posies of roses and other allotmenty things”

My Wild Life

Isn’t every garden a ‘wildlife’ garden? Even a carefully tended greenhouse has ‘wildlife’ – whitefly, vine weevils, woodlice, the odd fatally disorientated butterfly and – in the case of my friend Nicola who regularly leaves her swanky glasshouse door open by mistake – rabbits. ‘Wildlife gardening’ is often treated as a bit of a worldContinue reading “My Wild Life”

Titania’s bank

Amalee Issa reminded me that a few years ago I answered a question in my column on the subject of ‘Titania’s bank’ from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. So I had a rootle around my archive and found it – I remember now having great fun putting it together and thought I would give it anotherContinue reading “Titania’s bank”

National Garden Scheme: ‘Thorny Problems’

Saturday’s session in aid of the National Garden Scheme, held in the little hall across the road from my house in Wadhurst, and followed by a leisurely stroll around my garden, glass in hand, was a lovely low-key event, one that I am due to repeat this coming Saturday, June 14. I decided (more or lessContinue reading “National Garden Scheme: ‘Thorny Problems’”

Happy Snappers

I have had two or three in my time, and they hate doing it in the middle of the day. Garden photographers always prefer to hot-foot it to my door before dawn – or when sun, slanting over a sea of catmint and alliums, is definitely over the yard arm. The most dedicated was perhaps Jonathan Buckley. When he lived in Dulwich, forContinue reading “Happy Snappers”

Libertia – finally…

I don’t have a very elegant camera, so I am finding it really hard to get a picture (as promised) that does this wonderful plant justice. However, you can see the dark buds and stems here – quite unlike L. grandiflora: (Click on it for a bigger picture…)

Wadhurst Open Gardens

My village, Wadhurst in East Sussex, has just had its charity Open Gardens weekend and – probably to quote a hundred local newspaper reports on similar events this month, ‘the rain held off’ – just. The lack of precipitation was indeed a mercy afer last year’s wash out – but for those of us who bravely opened ourContinue reading “Wadhurst Open Gardens”

Chelsea Flower Show – a SPANA in the works

I have always moaned about Chelsea for all the usual reasons – the crowds and the scrum; the inevitable domination of the whole event by the show gardens and the fact that they often deceive, horticulturally; and all the drossy, tasteless things on sale (not in the main thoroughfare where the big players have their stalls,Continue reading “Chelsea Flower Show – a SPANA in the works”

Starlets

It is 7 a.m. and I was woken about two hours ago by a raucous cacophony – umpteen parent starlings sitting in the oak tree outside my bedroom, calling out to their fledgelings. We have quite a sizeable colony around here – presumably they like the accommodating construction of the eves of Edwardian houses orContinue reading “Starlets”