There was a luxuriant stand of it in my grandparent’s garden. It fascinated me as a child and I would be hard put to say whether the tiny waxy bells or the scent – rich, fresh and sweet all at once – attracted me most. When I started my own garden, lily of the valley (Convallaria majalis) was one of the signature flowers that I had to have – along...

“If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.” Wise words from Frances Hodgson Burnett in her much loved novel The Secret Garden. A country lane in Devon, UK Certainly spring in the countryside of Devon, in the South West of the UK, lives up to this. Narrow country lanes are flanked with exuberant vegetation. A Linear...

Visitors’ first sight of my front garden – before. I have a happy update to a rant about hating my arborvitae hedge, which I had removed in late 2019. (You may be wondering why I planted something so ugly in the first place – even before they started dying. Well, it’s about co-op rules, which I ranted about here.) So the plan was to instead, screen...

The thing which lifts my spirits in the cold wet spring is first, a ray of sunshine, and second colour! And yes, that does include green. Spring green: But most of all, something with real pow! And, I confess, when we are about to have visitors, I feel desperate for lots of flowers and colour in the garden for them.  So it doesn’t surprise me...

  I sometimes go catatonic while standing over an appealing plant I haven’t seen before. Looking like Mr. Pitiful, shoulders slumped, my eyes are fixed on the prize in front of me. I am silently pleading mercy. Gardeners will often rescue me if they’ve got enough time and plants to spare, especially if there is an interesting story to go along with...

Guest post by Tim Calkins They’re everywhere, whirling blades showering off the maples in every gust of wind, the next crop of trees on the move.  The first of the horde appeared on the pathways in mid-April, delivered by yesterday’s gusts.  They struck me as unusually pink, since those I typically see in my garden are of course from the nearby trees,...