Musings – Page 4 – Helen Yemm

Skirmishing in the trenches

Fabulously and at long last – I have got the upper hand on my allotment. All raised beds are built (some, to my great personal satisfaction, using recycled decking), spuds (Charlotte, Vivaldi and Anya) are up, autumn raspberries are a foot hight. Strawberry plants (Florence, Honeoye and Alice) are doing well in their smart new home and someContinue reading “Skirmishing in the trenches”

Calling all Garden & Horticultural Society Presidents

Quite out of the blue I have been asked to be the President of a local village Horticultural Society – a purely ‘ceremonial’ role, I expect, but one that I am really pleased to take on. I should love to hear from anyone else who has done, or is doing, something similar and hear about their experiences.Continue reading “Calling all Garden & Horticultural Society Presidents”

Email not working

My home email address has stopped working. If anyone is trying to get hold of me, I can be reached pretty quickly via my Telegraph address: helen.yemm@telegraph.co.uk

Control freaks and twiddlers

Are you a bit of a ruthless control-freak in the garden or do you just twiddle about? If you ask any gardening acquaintances they will readily jump (or tiptoe hesitantly) into one or other camp. I have just been rescuing a Twiddler friend’s climbing roses from years of indecisive mismanagement. You know the picture: horrid gnarledContinue reading “Control freaks and twiddlers”

Hello again

Hello, I’m back… Somehow I lost enthusiasm for sharing my thoughts. It all started to feel like a bit of a vanity trip to nowhere. However, Spring is here etc. etc… I’m sure I’m not the only one who has been enjoying several good gardening days on the trot. I absolutely adore this time ofContinue reading “Hello again”

What’s going on in Torquay? – tips on planting in the shade

My apologies to holiday Googlers everywhere. This is not about the south coast of England’s famous watering hole, but about a small bit of my garden, somewhat dismissivly described by a non-gardening friend as ‘looking like Torquay‘ when it first started to evolve. If you look at the pictures you will probably see why. I absolutelyContinue reading “What’s going on in Torquay? – tips on planting in the shade”

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”