Gardening

I have created five new gardens, each subsequently passed over to the people buying our property. It was a an herbaceous garden in Wolverhampton and then a heather and conifer garden in Penrith. [...]

Can you make soil? If that appears an odd question then stay with me. I was taught this skill in the 1960’s but beware, it involves some hard labour. You might ask why soil is needed. Well, [...]

What a Spring it has been for wildflowers! I have never seen so many different species nor the sheer mass of pastel colours. In the Peak District the display started with anemone nemorosa, which [...]

I developed an intimate knowledge of outdoor loo’s, in case you want to know, when I was 12 years of age. Poverty saw my mother send me out to work on a milk-round. I was earning, paid a [...]

Strawberry trees in Friars Cliff sounds rather like a fantasy, yet it’s true. They are fruiting now and this is the best time to identify them. The fruits tend to drop onto the path and [...]

Horticulture and global warming in Britain are rarely considered together. Horticulture is a dirty word these days, as are all jobs that utilise the land. However, it has a long history in [...]

Gardening is a sensuous hobby because it is all about fertility. Consequently, if we gardeners are not spawning vegetables and fruit then we are growing flowers. Success feeds the senses, not the [...]

I needed some seed potatoes and could only buy 20 earlies, called Rocket, on the internet. The internet reviews were pretty bad; tasteless and bland was the summary. However, beggars cannot be [...]

The word passion appeals to me; am I getting to be a dirty old man? Yes, is the answer but the dirt is soil. Oops, I hate soil being called dirt so I must not correlate the two words. Soil really [...]

Once again, I am a slave to nature. However, I recall the condition from years before so it is not new to me. It is a state whereby the garden demands constant action from me, most of it hard [...]