Snowdrops and aconites
A beautiful postcard stands beside my computer, showing drifts of woodland snowdrops. It’s an advertisement for four snowdrop weekends at Chippenham Park. One day I hope that there will be bountiful drifts of snowdrops and aconites in front of our cottage. At the moment there is a patch of grass. The south westerly aspect means sun all afternoon. There have always been small patches of snowdrops in spring, a few aconites and a little later, pale blue crocuses open like stars on bright days. The gravel driveway takes up most of the space...
read moreFlowers from the garden: December 2008
It’s been two years since I decided to stop buying cut flowers for the cottage. I love flowers so the first year was difficult. It seemed as if there were flowers for sale everywhere. I was tempted at every turn. This year the challenge has reaped dividends. I’ve overhauled the herbaceous borders over the past two years and now grow far more flowers than I used to. I treasure these flowers, whether they are growing in situ or picked to take indoors. Searching for flowers, especially during the winter months, means examining the garden...
read moreFlowers from the garden: November 2008
Oops. It’s now December and I’ve forgotten to post November flowers from the garden. But during November I did cast a beady eye around and spotted that the Mahonia x media ‘Charity’ was in bud and now it’s started to open. This is a beautiful shrub that enjoys a shady spot and can survive in most neglected UK gardens. I know this as I visit different houses and their gardens on a regular basis. We have counted and these visits averages around 70 a year. An amazing opportunity to meet new people and examine their houses and...
read moreFlowers from the garden: October 2008
In 1990, at the start of the boom, I was living in London and working in a small photo library in the East End. This was way beyond the City (the square mile of London’s East End that is the financial centre). Here there were quiet residential streets and parking spaces. I wasn’t happy in this job as my dyslexia (never divulged to the proprietor) meant that my indexing skills were eccentric. This often caused explosive ructions when a transparency had to be found in a hurry. In the end I spent most of my time mounting slides...
read moreFlowers from the garden: September 2008
I keep on extending the borders in the first part of the garden. This means digging out masses of bricks and rubble, generally a large barrow load to a square metre of soil. I now have two things. A large pile of hardcore and a very pretty border. Over the last two years I’ve filled the new border with perennials from the stand outside the secret garden. We visited this wonderful garden again early this summer when I discovered that the church fete was going to be held in the grounds. The fete was the quintessential English church fete. A...
read moreFlowers from the garden: August 2008
What could be sweeter than a posy of flowers. Picked from your own garden, on a sunny evening when the air is full of swallows and bees. Not just the flowers but the joy of the moment is carried indoors to curl beside me on the kitchen table. Companionable, late into the night. Outside, the garden drifts in darkness and the wind in the trees is the sound of the...
read moreFlowers from the garden: July 2008
I haven’t bought flowers for the cottage since January 2007. This has saved money and fast tracked the development of the herbaceous borders. Although we have now have quite a wide range of plants that flower in July, I’ve chosen an edible posy of flowers for this month’s entry. Nasturtiums and feverfew. I’ve always had a soft spot for nasturtiums ever since I spotted that the guinea pigs in a Beatrix Potter story were using them as parasols. We have nasturtiums growing in the kitchen garden. John Coe thinks that...
read moreThe Syringa Summerhouse and flowers from the garden June 2008
My mum pruned her Philadelphus on Sunday and had saved a large bunch of flowering branches for me. The Philadelphus (Mock Orange) has a special meaning for mum. When she was a child she played in a Philadelphus summer house in her parents’ garden. She always calls it the Syringa Summerhouse. In those days Syringa was a name for Philadelphus and didn’t refer to lilac as it does now. “The grown ups weren’t interested in it at all so I thought of it as mine.” I’d always imagined this summerhouse at the end of a...
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