God may have a special preference for beetles but, frankly, aphids (greenfly to you, squire) are more my thing. If that seems a barmy thing for a gardener to say, rest assured I get just as irritated as everyone else by their vigour-sapping, leaf-curling, virus-transmitting presence on my flowers, fruit, vegetables and greenhouse plants. When
As you make your sandwiches and get out your comfortable shoes ready for a day at the Royal Horticultural Society’s Chelsea Flower Show next week (24–29 May), do spare a thought for the 600 exhibitors of show gardens, plants, floral arrangements, educational exhibits and sundries. As you make your sandwiches and get out your comfortable
On the face of it, the phrase ‘forest garden’ is a contradiction in terms, since trees in mature forests do not allow enough sun through the canopy for satisfactory gardening. On the face of it, the phrase ‘forest garden’ is a contradiction in terms, since trees in mature forests do not allow enough sun through
News that the government is setting up a ‘land bank’ of brownfield sites, consisting of bits and pieces of spare or disused land, and encouraging councils and private landowners to lease these out to local groups as allotments, underscores the impression of a national appetite for ‘growing your own’. News that the government is setting
We have a picture hanging on a wall at home painted by Roger Fry about the time of the first world war and entitled ‘Pruning Trees’. We have a picture hanging on a wall at home painted by Roger Fry about the time of the first world war and entitled ‘Pruning Trees’. He portrays two
The gardening press in England is often criticised for being parochial. The Scots I meet never miss an opportunity to remind me of this but you could argue that Irish gardens and gardeners are more at the margins of our consciousness. Geographical distance is a major factor, of course, but against that must be set
The days are short, there is no light for gardening after work, and local horticultural societies are halfway through their winter programme of illustrated talks. All over the country, gardeners are gathering, in spartan village halls and echoing church rooms, on every first Tuesday in the month to listen to a ‘speaker’. These talks are
Last autumn, I issued a self-denying ordinance. I would not allow myself to plant a single solitary tulip in the garden, except in the large terrace pots. This was because the varieties planted in the open ground had become hopelessly muddled over time, so I wanted to clear the borders of them. We are often
The Royal Horticultural Society is like the Church of England. It seems always to have been there, a fixed, reassuring point in a changing world. Even to those who do not belong to it, it seems a Good Thing and it is hard to imagine national life without it. Among those who know it, it
This month sees the 25th anniversary of my first ‘Gardens’ column for The Spectator. This month sees the 25th anniversary of my first ‘Gardens’ column for The Spectator. This is an event more interesting to me than to you, dear reader; indeed, if asked, you might well have said 40, 20, or five years. It
I knew I was in for a treat when I drove up to the newly opened Butterfly World along Miriam Lane. An affectionate homage to Dame Miriam Lane (Rothschild), the great conservationist and butterfly enthusiast, was a good start, but so was the fact that the banks on the side of the road to the
As usual after the end of Chelsea Flower Show, I felt as flat as champagne left out in the sun. I was glad that I had a holiday in Boston (Mass. rather than Lincs.) in prospect. And, as luck would have it, the trip provided me with an unexpected botanical box of delights, exactly where
You have probably idly wondered, as you stood in a queue for the loos at Chelsea Flower Show, why the Royal Horticultural Society stages its greatest flower show of the year in the week before the Whitsun Bank Holiday. Late May is good for irises, Oriental poppies, alliums, hardy geraniums, seed-raised verbascums, lilacs, wisteria and
It’s spring, the gardening public has woken up and the plinky-plonky music calls us back for another series of BBC 2’s Gardeners’ World. It’s spring, the gardening public has woken up and the plinky-plonky music calls us back for another series of BBC 2’s Gardeners’ World. We in England have no choice; it is all
It is, at present, almost impossible to open a garden magazine, or the gardening pages of a national newspaper, without coming across an article on how we are all now kitchen gardeners and allotmenteers; the theme is that the uncertain economic conditions have turned us back to our gardens, to grow comestibles and thereby ensure
I find it impossible to be dispassionate about the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. For me, it is not just an area of part-designed, part-semi-natural landscape of 300 acres in south-west London, as well as a world-renowned centre of research and learning in botany and horticulture. Kew is where I learned the science and craft of
What is it with snowdrops? Why do people make so much fuss about them, when they are so small and relatively insignificant? These are questions that mystify people each February, as they view yet more images in newspapers or gardening magazines of chilly, brilliant white, droopy flowers on short stalks. I have, in the past,
We can all recite the statistics, can’t we? I mean the percentage fall in shopping activity in December, the names of the high street retail businesses that have gone bust or been taken over, the numbers of shopworkers who have lost their jobs. We can all recite the statistics, can’t we? I mean the percentage
Hooray for anthocyanin. Where would we be without it? It has long been my favourite water-soluble, vacuolar, glucosidic pigment, and I feel that this autumn has justified my preference. True, chlorophyll is more important until then, being essential for photosynthesis, so we should all be in dead trouble without it; and the carotenoids, carotene and
Is Christmas creeping up on you, unawares? Again? Have you found yourself, even at this late hour, facing a nil-all draw as far as presents bought, and presents asked for, is concerned? Never mind. When, finally, you can no longer ignore what is happening all around you, at least you can be comforted by the