Ursula Buchan

A feature of the gardening world, which probably strikes me rather more forcibly than it does you, is the number of amateur plant specialists there are. These are experts in one area of plantsmanship, usually, who aggregate in groups in order that they can exchange technical talk, test their skills in competition and learn from

Attentive readers will recall that, in recent years, I have worried and wittered and wrung my hands in these pages about the increasing incidents of unusual weather episodes (OK, have it your own way, climate change) and, in particular, whether these ‘abnormal’ conditions are simply temporary blips or represent a definite trend. No longer. I

Just as embroiderers working in the late 11th century will not have appreciated the achievement that was the Bayeux Tapestry until they stood well back at the finish, so garden writers are usually too caught up with describing the details of individual gardens to consider the overall magnificence of ‘the English garden’. It was not

There are, as we all know, many disadvantages to going away on holiday, not least the fact — so ably nailed by Alain de Botton — that we are forced to take ourselves with us. How relaxing it would be to leave home without one’s own deficiencies and inability to enjoy oneself when doing nothing.

There was an unexpected outbreak of common sense at Chelsea Flower Show this year. I looked hard for the usual silliness to laugh at, but I was hard-pressed to find much. (There were the celebrities who clutter up the place on Press Day, obviously, but the general public who visit Chelsea are mercifully spared those.)

British gardeners are often accused of being parochial, and we rarely make much attempt to defend ourselves against the charge. We think it is probably true but wonder what anyone expects, considering the advantages of climate, soil and geography we enjoy and how beautiful our gardens can be as a result. It is scarcely surprising

I have been talking tosh. Well, not entire tosh, but certainly substantial dollops of wishful thinking and airy, groundless supposition. I have come to this conclusion after reading a book by a plant scientist called Ken Thompson. However, it is written in such an engaging, amiable and witty way that it doesn’t hurt too much;

Christopher Lloyd died on 27 January. Not since the deaths of Gertrude Jekyll in 1932, William Robinson in 1935 and Vita Sackville-West in 1962 has so much homage been paid in the broadsheets to the memory of a gardener. In the nation at large, more people mourned the deaths of Percy Thrower and Geoff Hamilton,

It is a sign of the times that the Great Autumn Show, which has been staged by the Royal Horticultural Society in London in mid-September since God was a small boy, is moving to a date in early October from next year. Autumn starts later and lasts longer; that’s official. And this at a time

Sir Edwin Lutyens reckoned that there will never be great architects or architecture without great patrons, and I rather think the same is true of botanical art. The exhibition presently on show at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, entitled A New Flowering: 1,000 Years of Botanical Art, seems to reinforce the point. Displayed are works

The British have developed a number of garden styles over the centuries but none more unexpected than the ‘woodland garden’. No one in 1800, when the first rhododendrons were arriving in this country, could possibly have predicted that a sizeable number of large country gardens, situated on acid soil in rolling wooded countryside or in

There was a time, half a century ago, when vegetable gardening was the preserve of old boys on allotments and jobbing gardeners in spacious suburban gardens. No longer. These days, the vegetable grower is as likely to be a 30-year-old female social worker with a small urban garden and a Point of View about pesticides

On a mild, wet, early morning last autumn, I came across two earthworms (Lumbricus terrestris) mating on the lawn. At the vibration of my tread, they split apart and, though I try not to anthropomorphise animals (I could never have gone fox hunting if I had), such behaviour did look shifty, as if I had

In our garden, there is a two-seater, brick-built privy. It hasn’t been used for 40 years or so, but its presence in the garden still has a direct influence on my gardening. Not only does the present paved path follow the direction of the original rough concrete one which led from house to privy but,

From time to time, people to whom I am introduced mishear and mistake me for a Guardian journalist. I can’t always quite be bothered to put them right. I am not ashamed of being a gardening writer — far from it — but my profession has, in recent years, become something of a genteel ghetto.