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PLANT OF THE WEEK #96: Elaeagnus x ebbingei
Elaeagnus x ebbingei is a great big brute of a shrub. At a maximum of about 5m tall by the same wide, it’s unlikely that you’ll ever want to release it into your garden in an untamed form. But it’s...
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PLANT OF THE WEEK #97: Cupressus sempervirens
If only there were more trees with the emphatic verticality of the Italian cypress. But there aren’t. The Italian cypress (also known as pencil pine) is a stand alone, in every sense. It stands...
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Instagram – source of gardening fuel or FOMO?
I sat to down to write this, bar-heater blaring by my legs, overlooking a scene of windswept monochrome bleakness, and turned – just for a few seconds – to instagram. There I found myself...
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PLANT OF THE WEEK #98: Helleborus argutifolius
It’s a complete mystery to me why, of 100,000+ photos of plants in my photo library, I don’t have a single decent pic of Helleborus argutifolius. It more than merits tens, if not hundreds of pics....
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PLANT OF THE WEEK #99: Caryopteris ‘Heavenly Blue’
OK, I’ve resigned myself to the fact that today’s Plant of the Week has to be out of season. Once the last of the autumn leaves blows away in my garden, there’s really nothing to see until the first...
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How would your garden perform under the Jane Austen taste test?
So while bed-bound with covid last week, I wallowed in some culture and read Jane Austen’s Emma, having heard from a reliable source that it eclipses the better known, and perhaps better loved, Pride...
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PLANT OF THE WEEK #100: Euphorbia ‘Copton Ash’
One of the great ‘discoveries’ of my unwatered ‘steppe’ garden has been Euphorbia ‘Copton Ash’. I’d admired it, from a distance, for several years. It’s always hard to recall why you overlooked...
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PLANT OF THE WEEK #101: Miscanthus sinensis var. condensatus ‘Cosmopolitan’
So there are miscanthuses that fall into a ‘landscape’ category – that look fabulous en masse, or repeated about – and there are ‘novelty’ miscanthuses that should stand alone – that you only need one...
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Lost, But Happy
I spent last week in the second-most remote community on the continent. Which must make it one of the most remote communities in the world. Besides loving the work I was doing, assisting with an arts...
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PLANT OF THE WEEK #102: Penstemon ‘Blackbird’
I’ve always been in two minds – maybe more than two – in regard to penstemons. Yes, they’re generous in bloom, and yes, they come in a good range of colours. They flower for an incredibly long time,...
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