Here are my diary entries for an unforgettable four-day trip to Kyrgyzstan organised by tulip expert Polly Nicholson. This area of Central Asia is where most tulips originate from, with 25-30 species endemic to Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan and neighbouring countries. All the hybrid tulips we grow in Britain are derived from these wild species. Joined by photographer Eva Nemeth, our aim was to find as many native tulips as we could to document for an article that will run in House & Garden next year to coincide with a major new exhibition on tulips that Polly is curating at the Garden Museum.

April 17th

We walk out of Bishkek airport into pouring rain at 8.30am - and it doesn’t let up all day. ‘You see the mountains from here, but not today,’ says our guide Sergei in his heavy Russian accent. ‘All tulips closed in this weather’. He’s dressed in khaki with a camouflage cap and looks like he’s just about to take us out on an army PT session. This isn’t a good start after a nightmare overnight flight with an inebriated man repeatedly slumping onto my shoulder.

We decide to forego our first day of botanising in the mountains for a trip to the city markets and museums. Kyrgyzstan’s capital city Bishkek is intriguing, a melting pot of cultures. On the legendary Silk Road, the city was captured by the Russians in 1862 and became a Russian garrison town, changing its name to Frunze in 1926. It was only in 1991 that the country became independent, and the Russian influence is still very much in evidence, especially in the Soviet-style architecture of the city. The Natural History Museum is a brooding stone box of a building with a huge, empty expanse of grey stone in front and a disproportionately vast flag flying mesmerisingly above. After a colourful walk through a local market, we drive half an hour to the southern suburbs of the city to our hotel.

Read more

April 11th

The sun is out and I go for my daily inspection stroll around the garden to see what has happened since yesterday. The peonies seem to have grown at least an inch overnight and a new wallflower is just starting to wake up. The unopened flowers are almost black, opening up to the most amazing claret that reminds me of one of the velvet ball dresses I made in the 1980s.

One thing I’m tapping into as much as I can is the insect life in the garden, which seems to be ramping up year by year. I don’t know whether that’s because I’m introducing more and more diversity each year, or whether I’m becoming more observant and tuning into all the life, but this spring the flowers are loaded with different bees, hoverflies and ladybirds. I watch a bee-fly checking out the honesty with its long, spiky proboscis, and a peacock butterfly flitting round the border. The energy from these tiny, busy creatures is palpable.

I hope the abundance of wildlife is something to do with the chemical-free environment I nurture. I have always gardened without chemicals, right from the day I got my first allotment, and sometimes I take it for granted that everyone else does too, which of course isn’t the case. ‘I’m organic but I still have to spray the weeds in the driveway,’ said someone I was chatting to at a talk I gave the other day. Someone else was using osmocote fertiliser in her pots (a synthetic, slow-release fertiliser) and spraying roses for black spot.

It is difficult to be wholeheartedly organic unless you use certified organic compost (the Sylvagrow organic peat free compost is the best I have found) and buy organic seeds, plants and bulbs. But it IS easy to stop using weed killer, pesticides and artificial fertilisers, which muck around with the soil flora. Go cold turkey and I promise that you will begin to see the natural ecosystems in your garden start to flourish. There will be more birds to eat the caterpillars, more ladybirds to feast on the aphids, more hedgehogs to control the slugs, and so on: a cascade of nature that eventually means you won’t get out-of-control pest problems in your garden. Garden Organic has a good guide and their website is full of good resources and downloadable booklets. Their organic gardening principles start with the five pillars of organic gardening:

Read more

April 4th

Spring has really arrived in the garden. It’s having a moment, as friends in my garden group tend to say, and it’s difficult to drag myself away over the Easter weekend, but we are visiting my parents in Somerset. Before I go I water all my seedlings obsessively and leave the greenhouse door wide open as I know it’s going to be warm. My parents’ garden is looking immaculate. Mum (83) and Dad (87) are still looking after their acre with such love and care, mainly on their own. Dad has Alzheimer’s and gardening is something he has always done, so he carries on digging, turning compost and making bonfires. He drives Mum mad by digging up potatoes he’s just planted and adding layer after layer of not-quite-rotted compost - and the creosoting! The gates and fences are thick with the stuff as it’s another one of those things that he just does on autopilot. They can’t move out as he would be entirely lost without this garden - it keeps him going, keeps him pottering, and keeps my mother sane.

Don’t you think gardening should be available on prescription? I went to a brilliant talk at Serge Hill the other day about hospital gardens and the tangible, measured benefits of living, green outdoor space for anyone physically or mentally ill. The panel discussion with Jinny Blom, Rachel de Thame and Sue Stuart-Smith was organised as a fundraiser for a new garden at Mount Vernon Hospital in Hertfordshire, a project led by the wonderful Matt Biggs (Gardeners Question Time). Matt has been fighting his own battle with cancer for some years and was there, in a wheelchair, as cheery as ever. What an inspirational man. ‘I’m so glad I belong to this wonderful community of gardeners,’ he said, and I had to choke back the tears.

Jinny told us about the indoor Sky Garden she designed for the ICU at the Chelsea & Westminster and talked about an art programme there that ran projected films of nature on the white walls of the paediatric burns unit. The time taken to dress wounds was hugely reduced when these immersive films were played. And there were other facts about intensive care units where just the view of greenery and outdoor space (as opposed to white walls) significantly helped to reduce delirium and acute illness. As Oliver Sachs wrote: ‘In many cases, gardens and nature are more effective than any medication.’

The actual gardening of these spaces is so therapeutic. Surely there must be a way to create these communal hospital gardens and then run programmes that pull people in to help garden them - there are so many people in our communities who would benefit from this. I came across the Gardening GP on Instagram recently (@the_gardening_gp). She has established a community garden in Devon where she lives, and prescribes gardening to patients suffering from mental health issues. We need more people like her in this world.

Back to my parents’ garden. We have a good session clearing one of their beds, and I persuade my son to get involved too. I tell mum to relax but she is soon out there with us, and then Dad arrives with a wheelbarrow to take everything to the bonfire heap. For an hour we have three generations working together and it’s so lovely.

Read more

The clocks have changed, the evenings are getting longer, and we are well into what is possibly the busiest month of the gardening year. Thankfully I’m full of energy and enthusiasm in spring. I sow, weed, mulch and plant like mad, on a mission to cram as many different plants into my garden as I can while still keeping a modicum of designed coherence.

I grow new flowers from seed each year, choosing plants that I feel drawn to and throwing them together in ways that I hope will work. I try to imagine what a certain combination will look like in my mind’s eye, thinking about shape and height and spread as well as colour (although colour is less important I feel, especially in the cottage garden at the front of the house where clashing colours are welcome). The reality is, of course, that some things don’t work, and when this happens, I simply move them around until they please my eye. I paint with plants. I wrote more about putting plants together in my 2004 series on designing with plants, including posts on Evergreen Structure, Colour, Shapes & Silhouettes, Scent and Making a Planting List.

At this time of year, it’s all about the anticipation and the vision for what is to come. I look at all my well-loved plants that come back year after year and I know exactly how they are going to transform themselves through the spring and summer. The sedums, forming neat mounding cushions in granny smith green, will grow upwards and outwards, their flowers turning dusky pink and finally stained a deep wine-red. The ‘Tiny Monster’ Geraniums are always too hasty, putting on too much verdant growth and then collapsing the moment the weather turns dry. The peonies, shoots fingering upwards in shades of ruby red, produce leaves and buds almost overnight, ready to flower in May and June. All these plants have their own foibles and once you get to know them, this anticipation - and wonder - at what they will become over a single, miraculous season is the thing that drives you from year to year.

So despite the sheer number of tasks waiting to be ticked off this month, number one on my list is to make time just to watch what is happening in the garden. I want to see the buds bursting, the fresh new leaves unfurling, the bees landing on each pollen-laden bloom. Once I’ve given myself the time to observe, I start work.

Edging, Weeding and Mulching

I start with the heavy tasks first and when my back gets sore, I retreat to the greenhouse to prick out seedlings and sow more seeds - the quiet things I love doing most. Barrowing the last of the mulch round the garden is hard work but everything looks shipshape after it’s done. You have to make sure the ground is weed-free first, otherwise you’re just delaying a problem that will pop up in a week or two. Small annual weeds or unwanted seedlings from perennials that you don’t want everywhere need to be removed at this stage. (In my garden, echinops, phlomis and Cephalaria gigantea are the worst offenders). I do this by hand rather than hoeing as among the unwanted seedlings there are also some that I want to keep - ammi, poppies and Verbascum chaixii Album are generally welcomed, and this year I’m also happy to see Orlaya grandiflora seedlings that have come through the winter.

If your flower beds are bordered by lawn, edging them with a proper semicircular-headed edging tool is an easy way to make you feel like you are on top of things. It creates an instant sense of neat and tidiness that is immensely satisfying.

Sowing, Pricking out and Planting

Between the house, the greenhouse and two outdoor tables, a complex conveyor belt of sowing and pricking out is taking place. As the weather hasn’t warmed up hugely yet, I’m still sowing most things inside, either in a propagator or in the boiler room, where it is consistently warm. Once things have germinated, the seedlings go out into the unheated greenhouse, where they grow on until they are big enough to handle and prick out. The ‘rule’ is that each seedling needs two pairs of leaves before you do this, but the reality is that some seedlings are fine to prick out with only one pair of big fat leaves (such as cynoglossum or scabious) while others are tiny and may have two or three tiny leaflets but still aren’t big enough to remove and put into an individual pot. You have to play it by ear.

I sowed most of my hardy annuals in March but you can still sow more of them throughout April - including sweet peas, marigolds, sunflowers, cornflowers and many more, and when the temperature rises a few more degrees, you can sow direct into the ground. In the greenhouse this month I focus on the half hardies, so I’m sowing dahlias, zinnias and nicotiana. They tend to germinate quickly in some heat, and you can’t plant them out until any danger of frost has passed. I have written previous posts about growing dahlias, perennials and sweet peas from seed, and here is another post about growing annuals from seed and how I use them in the borders later in the summer.

The veg I’m sowing this month

April is the time I force myself to start focusing on sowing vegetables, as I find flowers so much more rewarding to grow. This is partly to do with the fact that my veg plot has been so spectacularly unsuccessful over the past several years, maybe because of the moisture-sucking willow tree right next to it. But I do love having delicious organic produce to harvest in the summer months, so I need to get over myself. Maybe I will try direct sowing again this year. In previous years I have sown most things in modules or pots beforehand, and I think sometimes I leave them languishing in their pots for too long so that their growth is checked, even when they finally get into the ground. A different approach is needed. Outdoors, I’ll be sowing spinach, chard, lettuce, calabrese, runner beans and slightly later, French beans, both dwarf and climbing varieties. In the greenhouse, I’ll sow tomatoes, cucumbers, courgettes, squash and chillis.

Half my veg beds are looking eccentrically overgrown at the moment. I kept them covered with self seeded plants over the winter, and they are a treasure trove of seedlings and looking rather lovely with forget-me-nots, ammi, verbascum, Euphorbia oblongata, marigolds and poppies. I feel reluctant to clear them and have decided to plant the veg in between these interlopers in a polycultural system that will hopefully be beneficial for the crops. In theory all these different root systems are fantastic for the soil flora, and pests and diseases are reduced. We’ll see!

Other garden tasks for April

• plant perennials or container grown shrubs to fill gaps in the border

• pot up cuttings of tender perennials like salvias and penstemons

• plant dahlia tubers or other summer bulbs directly into the ground

• take basal stem cuttings from perennials

• deadhead tulips and daffodils as they fade, but leave stems and leaves

• water pots if it has been dry

• put in herbaceous plant supports before plants get too tall

• sow new lawns or repair bare patches

• watch out for slugs as plants such as dahlias, lupins and delphiniums come up

• divide ornamental grasses

Tulip watch

The tulips are looking pretty spectacular this year, and the cool weather we’ve been having means they are lasting well. I planted crimson ‘Pieter de Leur’ three years ago, and it’s acting in a very perennial way, increasing rather than dwindling, which is great. Last year I thought it was a bit loud - but this year I’m in love with it again. Does it depend on the mood you’re in each spring I wonder? My eye is craving colour this year.

The Belle Epoque tulips seem much brighter and pinker this year - is it my imagination? I’m wondering whether its the cool weather that is holding them at this colourful stage, whereas in previous years they have faded quickly because of the heat. I added lots more to the cottage garden beds, their colours echoed by Geum ‘Totally Tangerine’ and Erysimum ‘Apricot Twist’

‘Ballerina’ is another reliably perennial tulip - my bulbs are now eight years old and coming back strong every year. Colour-clashing with ‘Pieter’ and lime-green Euphorbia characias, against a backdrop of vivid purple honesty (see above), the colour dial is turned right up to the top.

Rich red ‘Uncle Tom’ and darkest purple ‘Black Hero’ are still in bud but promising a good display, while in the quieter back garden, 'Spring Green’ and ‘Verona’ are balanced by more ‘La Belle Epoque’. I also have some amazing broken tulips, where the flower colours have been split and flamed, probably due to a virus - and some that are complete aberrations, with parrot-type, green flowers that look twisted and stunted - I have no idea what they are or whether they are even meant to look like this, but I definitely didn’t order them.

Pasque Flowers

As their name suggests, the pasque flowers (Pulsatilla vulgaris) are always out for Easter. I have the most divine ruby pink one called ‘Rose Bells’ and that has been the first to flower; the common purple and white forms are slightly behind, but just starting to burst into bloom. I love their silken petals that turn into equally lovely seed heads, and they are the easiest, most undemanding plants to grow, thriving in poor soil or gravel with very little water. You can read my previous post about them here.

And on that note, I wish you all a very happy Easter. Have an enjoyable and restful weekend.

Clare x

Next week for paid subscribers: the best varieties of cosmos, zinnias and nicotiana to sow now

Leave a comment

A rather long post for you today because even by my fairly hectic standards, this has been a particularly busy, garden-saturated week. I’ve been up to London twice, out for a book launch lunch, out for supper at the Garden Museum, down to the Cotswolds for a garden lecture day and over to a garden I helped make at the kids’ old school. It’s Friday now and I have to admit, once I’ve wrapped this post up I’m looking forward to sitting by the fire with a glass of wine to unwind. Nothing planned for this evening - thank goodness!

March 21st

I’m up early this morning picking tulips and daffodils to exhibit at the village show. I had entered right on deadline yesterday (or actually half an hour after), while I was on the train back from London, without knowing exactly what was blooming in the garden. I feel confident. I’ve just picked masses of beautiful hellebores in jewel-like colours and floated them in my favourite junk shop bowl, and made an arrangement of flowers that is much fuller than I imagined it would be, with a base of Skimmia ‘Kew Green’, honesty, viburnum and wood spurge (ends seared so it doesn’t wilt) dotted with plump tulips in burnt orange, lemon and deep red.

I get to the village hall and jostle with others at the outdoor table to find the green plastic containers that everything has to be displayed in. My first miniature narcissus go in and almost disappear - the stems are too short. ‘Pad it out with a bit of newspaper’ says the kind lady next to me. Next my three ‘Verona’ tulips go in, one of them still quite tightly in bud. Mmm. Not sure these are going to win any prizes.

I go into the hall to register, thankful for my winning bowl of hellebores. ‘Ah. Those will be disqualified if you put them in like that,’ says my neighbour Fiona. ‘You’re only meant to have five’. What? I feel foolish for not reading the rules properly (I’ve never been good at reading the small print) and with my tail between my legs go into a corner to remove seven out of the twelve perfectly formed blooms. Five hellebores are left floating in the bowl like tiny water lilies in a huge lake. I don’t even have time to go home to find a smaller bowl because I have family coming to stay and I haven’t had time to make the beds.

Several hours later I return with my niece with the promise of tea and cake. Surely my flower arrangement might have caught the judges’ eye? Darn it, no, it’s been pipped to the post by an elegant, but dare I say it, rather old fashioned arrangement of narcissus and forsythia in shades of 1950s yellow. No first prizes this year, a few seconds and thirds - and a note saying my bowl was too big for my hellebore display! But it’s all in the taking part, as they say, and I love the tradition of these shows and the way it brings everyone together.

March 22nd

At last, a whole weekend in the garden, and a sore back to tell the tale. I get through most of the back garden borders, weeding and mulching on hands and knees, and very satisfying it is too. The tulips are blooming already - it’s all two or three weeks early this year - and having forgotten what I’d planted in the autumn, it’s a surprise and a joy to see what’s coming up. I had to look back at what I ordered and I have more ‘Ballerina’ coming, as well as ‘La Belle Epoque’, ‘Uncle Tom’, ‘Alexander Pushkin’, ‘Gavota’ and ‘Copper Image’.

The wallflowers are about to pop too. I have increased my collection over the last few years, gradually adding more. I even sowed some from seed - a variety called ‘Sugar Rush Purple’ which appears to have come back successfully this year. The old fashioned wallflowers that you remember from your grandparents’ gardens are usually the ones treated as biennials, derived from Erysimum cheiri. With spicy-scented flowers, they are actually short-lived perennials from the Mediterranean that may come back for two or three years before fading out. Recently, a range of new perennial wallflowers have arrived on the scene. In the same vein as the older and well known ‘Bowles Mauve’, they flower for longer than the biennials, from early spring to mid-summer. Derived from other species like E. linifolium which comes from Spain and Portugal, these perennial forms are more robust and last perhaps four or five years, but may not be as scented as the biennials. Here’s a list of some of the best ones.

Read more

March 14th

We are in Wales for the weekend where my sisters and I have a family cottage. It’s perched right on the edge of the beautiful Mawddach estuary in the southern part of the Snowdonia National Park, and my parents bought it as a wreck 40 years ago. We love it fiercely - it’s our bolt hole and a place where we can truly unwind.

Even after 40 years we find new walks every time we’re there, in the rugged, gold-mine countryside around Cadair Idris, Diffwys and Garth Gell, where ancient oak forests clad the lower slopes of the mountains. These incredible temperate rainforests are fairytale landscapes, rocks and trees clad with a rich patina of emerald green moss. The trees are spangled with silvery lichens, and epiphytic ferns sprout upwards from branches like green fingers on giant limbs. Nature can express itself completely here, creating ecosystems where thousands of different plant, insect, animal and bird species can thrive. Otherworldly and immersive, these temperate rainforests are incredibly rare; in Britain they can be found in mild areas with high rainfall, in Devon, North Wales and the West Coast of Scotland. We need to respect and protect these areas and recognise them for their amazing biodiversity. You can read more about them here from the Woodland Trust.

Read more

A package arrives from Chiltern Seeds. ‘Why have I ordered so many seeds?’ I ask my husband rhetorically, and he just shakes his head at me. I sift through the 22 seed packets, mostly annuals, and realise that this is the second order from Chiltern this season. The first was mainly for perennials. The trouble is, I get swept up into the excitement of spring at this time of year and want more and more. I add the seed packets to the ones that came yesterday from Marlston Farmgirl and take them out to the greenhouse. With so many seeds to be sown I need to stay on top of it and immediately start sowing.

I have just agreed to open my garden for two separate groups in mid June so I’m thinking ahead and need to make sure all my pots are planted early and looking good by then. I want a real mixture of bright and pastel colours this year, so this is what I’m aiming for, with smaller pots planted with a single type of flower, and larger pots with combinations. This is the palette I’m working from:

Calendula officinalis ‘Sherbert Fizz’, Antirrhinum ‘Chantilly Bronze’ and Phlox ‘Creme Brulee’. I’ve just sown some of this calendula straight into the beds in the front garden and the rest I’ll sow into modules to go into pots later. I think its pale flowers will go well with Phlox ‘Creme Brulee’ which has lax, trailing stems and flowers, and the antirrhinum will be the accent plant with taller spikes of dark pinky-orange flowers.

Read more

February 23rd

It’s Christmas again. I knock on Rachel de Thame’s front door at 8am on Monday morning and she throws open the door to reveal a stupendous 20 foot Christmas tree adorned with all her favourite decorations. Swags of greenery sit on the mantelpiece and box stems are woven around picture frames. No, it’s not a dream, we’re re-living Christmas for a House & Garden shoot which will appear in the magazine next December. It’s all a bit surreal on what turns out to be one of the warmest and spring-like days of the year so far, but photographer Dean Hearne aces it and Rachel and her daughter Lauren are stars, sweltering in winter coats and scarves while they are photographed collecting winter greenery. We have fun, and it’s all in a day’s work to be thrown into a completely different season in the name of a good feature. We’re not faking it, as such, just recreating what would have happened over Christmas when Rachel was too busy with real life to do the shoot.

Read more

Subscribe now

It feels good to be in March after one of the wettest beginnings of the year I can remember. The grey skies have hung heavily and the mud has been unending. It has been difficult to do anything in the garden, let alone persuade myself to step outdoors into its soggy embrace. But this week we’ve had a day or two of blue skies and warmer temperatures. Yesterday I had my lunch on the bench under the willow tree and watched a few bees visiting the crocuses that had at last opened in the sun. A couple of yellow brimstone butterflies bobbed around the borders looking slightly lost. Like the crocuses, I held my face up to the sun and it felt wonderful.

More colour is starting to emerge in the garden with the euphorbias beginning to flower and the first honesty plants popping open in vibrant purpley blue - the perfect contrast to the lime green euphorbias. Miniature narcissus and muscari are flowering in pots, and the tulips are filling out and pushing upwards. Everything is in motion. I sit on the bench in the sun and jot down a list of what needs to be done in the garden this weekend and through the rest of the month.

Sow hardy annuals

I have masses of seeds to sow this month which will fill up my summer pots as well as plugging gaps in the borders. I’m sowing most of them in small seed trays under cover and will keep them in the greenhouse until it gets slightly warmer. As well as the usual stalwarts (including ammi, orlaya, calendula, Papaver ‘Amazing Grey’, Phlox ‘Creme Brulee’ and zinnias) I like trying new annuals each year, so these are the ones that are new to me, all from Chiltern Seeds:

Amaranthus cruentus ‘Hot Biscuits’: I have never grown amaranthus before - I just haven’t fancied it for some reason - yet when I see them in other gardens I am always impressed, so I want to try them myself. This one has great big flower spikes in the most improbable copper colour. I think they might be good planted with dahlias. I’ve also ordered ‘Green Tails’ from Marlston Farmgirl.

Antirrhinum ‘Potomac Lavender’: I grew ‘Chantilly Bronze’ from seed a couple of years ago, and it came back beautifully last year - I’m hoping it will do the same again. We traditionally grow them as annuals, but I think naturally they are perennials, and with the warmer winters we’ve been having, some of them are managing to come through. ‘Potomac Lavender’ is one I haven’t tried before. All the Potomac series are bred with tall, strong stems designed for cutting, and the flowers of this one are pale lavender pink, fading to an even paler hue.

Cosmidium burridgeanum ‘Brunette’: sometimes I wonder why I haven’t heard of something before, and this is one of those flowers - perhaps some of you will have come across it (let me know!) A meadow-type annual from Texas, it is reminiscent of a coreopsis, with bright orange flowers that have a dark, rusty red centre.

Cynoglossum amabile ‘Firmament’: the Chinese forget-me-nots are very easy to grow and good for pots as well as the edge of a border. I have grown the pale dusky pink ‘Mystery Rose’ before but not the more common blue one, so this one is destined for the cottage garden where bright colour is the order of the day.

Helianthus annuus ‘Astra Rose’: A new sunflower every year is what I strive for, and this one looks a bit different. With a multi-branching habit, it has narrow, pale apricot petals, and a prominent fluffy centre.

Leonotis leonorus: I would buy this for the name alone. I have actually grown it before, but many years ago, so I want to try it again. It’s a Mexican shrubby perennial that is grown here as an annual, but if you keep it in a pot you’d be able to overwinter it in a greenhouse or conservatory. It’s a South African plant with huge, impressive spikes of orange flowers that are arranged in whorls up the stem.

Linum grandiflorum ‘Salmon’: This flax relative is best sown in situ, perhaps as a filler at the front of a cottage garden border. It has pretty apricot-coloured flowers with ruby red centres.

Nicotiana sylvestris: I have grown lots of tobacco plants, but never the tall, imposing Nicotiania sylvestris with its curious chandelier-type white flowers. I want the evening scent and the bonkers look of them at the back of the main border.

Tropaeolum majus ‘Arizona Mix’: I like having nasturtiums winding through my vegetables towards the end of the summer. ‘Arizona Mix’ looks interesting with starry flowers that look like they’ve been edged with pinking shears, as opposed to the normal rounded petals of a nasturtium. They come in all shades of orange, yellow and cream marked with deep red splashes or centres.

Seed sowing essentials: This is the kit I use for my seed-sowing season.

• peat free multi-purpose or seed compost. Sylvagrow is my preferred choice.

• small quarter-sized seed trays plus lids or eco-friendly rubber modular seed trays

• a simple windowsill propagator which you can get in both heated or unheated versions

• pot tampers like these handmade oak tampers from my own website

• a wooden compost tray for sowing and potting

• finely milled cork granules as an alternative to vermiculite for seeds that need light to germinate

If you need more seed-sowing inspiration, have a look at my Create Academy course, which demystifies and celebrates the whole wonderful process of growing your own flowers from seed. There is currently 20% off all courses.

Plant perennials

Now is a good time to add hardy perennials to any new or revamped borders, while there is still enough moisture in the soil. I have oriental poppies, phlox and helianthemums that I bought as plug plants from J. Parkers in the autumn, and have been growing them on in pots, and these need to get into the ground as soon as possible. I’m excited about Papaver orientale ‘Patty’s Plum’ as I have always wanted it but never got round to growing it. I think there are five decent sized plants to go in. These and Phlox paniculata ‘Bright Eyes’ are for the front garden as the intention is to make it slightly less meadow-like and more classic cottage garden.

I also have about six Helianthemum ‘Bronze Carpet’ which having looked at a photo of them again today I may live to regret - they are really quite garish (see below). They will be dotted around in the gravel around the house, to brighten up the random gravel planting.

And finally, I have a very precious plant to get into the ground this weekend. I’ve been nurturing it for two years and it’s currently in a pot in my greenhouse. It’s a seedling of a Cypriot umbellifer called Zossima absynthifolia, and I’m hoping it’s big enough to plant and survive at least one summer. I first saw it when I went wildflower hunting in Cyprus and fell in love with it. In the wild there, it was a bushy plant growing up to about a metre, with huge white lacy flowers exploding outwards on long stems. The seed heads too were magnificent. If I manage to get this one in flower, I will be ecstatic - it may not survive the winter, but at least I’ll be able to collect the seeds and see if it will grow again as an annual.

For more ideas on planning and planting a border for seasonal interest, here is a previous post that shows my own garden through the seasons.

Finish cutting back borders and mulch

This should have been at the top of the list, because it’s the job that is going to take the longest, and the one that I need to focus on first. The seed sowing will be the light relief in between, when my back is screaming from too much bending and barrowing. The last of the old growth in the borders has to be chopped back, and I have a bulk bag of composted bark on hand to mulch the flower borders with - but I need to weed the beds thoroughly first. I wrote about mulching in this post a couple of weeks ago, explaining why I decided to go for composted bark rather than a more nutrient-dense mulch - and why I decided not to do the chop and drop method this year. The weeding/mulching task may be stretched over several weekends unless I can persuade my husband to help. It’s like exam revision or an article hanging over me: once it’s done, I can move on.

Plant dahlia tubers

I ordered some new dahlias to go in this year, so I’ll start these off in pots this weekend. Dahlias aren’t fully hardy, so I’ll keep the pots in my greenhouse under cover until at least the beginning of May, and then gradually harden them off outside before planting into the borders. It’s always a good idea to plant them fairly high in the pot with the top of the tubers just showing through the compost, so you can take cuttings. You can read more about dahlias and how to take these cuttings (it’s really easy) in a previous post. It’s not too late to order dahlia tubers from companies like Farmer Gracy, Peter Nyssen or Rose Cottage Plants - and these dahlia collections from Crocus have a 20% discount. I have the Botanical Tales collection curated by fellow Substacker Bex Partridge for Crocus, with flowers in tones of pink and apricot. I’ll also be sowing dahlias from seed again this year, from the Marlston Farmgirl dahlia seed mix.

Other tasks for March

• prepare vegetable beds and sow hardy crops like lettuce, radish, chard, broad beans and brassicas outside

• sow tomatoes and other tender veg under cover and leave in the greenhouse or cold frame until it warms up

• keep up with the weeding as soon as temperatures rise

• plant seed potatoes

• feed roses with a fertiliser such as blood, fish and bone

• finish pruning roses before they come into full growth

• be watchful for slugs, especially after all the rain we’ve had

• deadhead daffodils as they go over and leave the foliage to die back naturally

• deadhead and cut back hydrangeas to about a third, if not already done

• cut back penstemons to let new growth come through

• cut autumn flowering raspberries right back to the base

• mulch rhubarb and fruit bushes with garden compost or well rotted manure

I hope you’ve found some useful things here - do let me know if you want me to include anything specific in my posts. Enjoy your own gardens as spring gets going!

Clare

Leave a comment

Share

February 14th

It’s Valentine’s Day and the best present I can imagine is a day in the garden with the sun on my back. After 25 years, my husband knows me well enough to realise that I don’t need armfuls of out-of-season roses. At this time of year these are most likely to have been flown over from Kenya where growers wear hazmat suits because the flowers are being sprayed with cocktails of pesticides so toxic they are banned over here. Read this shocking Guardian article for a wake up call.

The very first Valentine’s Day after we got together he filled the whole car with flowers and bought several vases to put them in, and the rest is history. But we don’t need to prove things to each other nowadays. Elif Shafak’s recent piece on the different, nuanced definitions of love in Greek history is a lovely read, and I agree wholeheartedly that ‘Valentine’s Day does not have to be so heavily commercialised and monetised, if we could only make it a meaningful opportunity to reflect on the meaning of “love”.’

Today the sun is out and the sky blue for the first time in weeks, so we divide and conquer - he takes the dogs out and I dive straight out into the garden. As is so often the case, I don’t have a solid plan for the day - my work happens organically, quite often morphing from one task to another as I get distracted and see different things that need doing. I start by digging over what has been my seed-grown dahlia bed in the veg garden which I now want to reclaim for vegetables. It’s a raised bed edged with sleepers so I can reach in and dig most of it without tramping down the wet earth. I’ve been putting compost on this bed for seven years so it’s easy to dig, crumbly and soft. The sun is on my face and on my back and I can feel its power. The birds are singing lustily. I take off my jacket. This is SO good!

Read more

For anyone wanting to upgrade to a paid subscription with full access to all four posts each month, and extra video content from my garden and elsewhere, there is still time to get the discounted rate (20% off a year’s subscription) until the end of February, if you follow this link.

February 9th

It’s delphiniums that are occupying my mind today. I’m doing a series on old fashioned plants in H&G - perhaps a backlash against the current trend for easy, drought-tolerant plants that thrive in a low nutrient soil. When I’m researching these articles I often go down a rabbit hole and start exploring all sorts of avenues that I’ll never have room to include in the finished article, which is meant to be between 850 and 950 words. I love discovering all these extra facts and at least it’s a more enriching way to get distracted than on Instagram.

Today I learn an interesting fact about delphiniums, which is that the plants for sale in most large-scale nurseries or garden centres are usually raised from seed, meaning that on the whole they are less robust than the ones you can buy from delphinium specialists like Home Farm Plants and Blackmore & Langdon. I talk to Graham Austin at Home Farm Plants and he says: ‘The Pacific Hybrids that are available in garden centres are raised from seed, and it’s a strain that is producing weak plants which gives delphiniums a bad name. People buy them but they don’t last. The plant might come back for one year but it will probably die off after that.’ That totally reflects my own experience; I bought one a few years ago, which came back to bloom in its second year but has since disappeared. The named cultivars sold by the specialist nurseries are more expensive but they have been propagated vegetatively by cuttings and given the right conditions and treatment, they will return year after year. Home Farm Plants is in Hertfordshire and open from April until the end of September. Graham and his wife Nina also visit all the major RHS shows to sell plants, so look out for them there.

Read more

Subscribe now

My garden

I’m not going to pretend it’s all roses this month. Like many others, I struggle at this time of year, especially when it has rained for 25 out of 31 days in January. My garden is not enticing, the grass a mud bath from dogs and chickens, and the half-cut-back borders look soggy and unattractive. The Crocus tommasinanus are peppering the lawn but their flowers are stubbornly closed because they haven’t seen any sun. I don’t blame them. Still, there are various things you can do to lift your spirits at this time of year, and I have made a list for you below. Handily, some of them are garden tasks that set you on the path towards spring and a whole new year of colour and bloom.

One of the things I do at this time of year is to go as frequently round the garden as I can - which doesn’t take long, it’s not a palatial space. But it reminds me of the plants that are coming back, already pushing through the ground in that inevitable cycle of life. I have pots of early spring bulbs by my greenhouse that I bring over to the table outside my kitchen window as things come into flower. Crocus ‘Snowbunting’ has given way to intense blue Iris reticulata, guaranteed to waken the senses. As these go over, they will be replaced by miniature narcissus and dwarf tulips, so that with each week that goes by, I have a succession of flowers to distract me.

One of the things that is making me happy at the moment is the giant fennel, Ferula glauca, I planted recently in the gravel amongst the hollyhocks (shown below). It’s looking so healthy with fat plumes of foliage in deep, fresh green, and a claret-red stem.

The hellebores are in full flow but a couple of them look sickly. I’ve been worried that they might have the dreaded hellebore black death, which is a viral infection that causes stunted growth and black, vein-like streaks on the leaves and flowers - but having just done some reading about it I’m hoping that it might be the slightly less devastating hellebore leaf spot. This is a fungal infection so perhaps more likely in the wet weather we’ve been having. Either way, the recommendation is to cut the plants right back, or even to dig them up completely and chuck them away. One of them is an expensive new yellow hellebore that I bought from Ashwood Nursery last year and I really don’t want to get rid of it completely - so I’ll try cutting it back and hope that does the trick.

Cheering garden tasks for February

Sow the first seeds of the year: I sow sweet peas and hardy perennials in February, and it instantly makes me feel good. I’ve already sown echinaceas, evening primrose, salvias and fennel, germinating most things inside at this time of year before taking them out to the cool greenhouse once they have germinated. I’m using small quarter sized seed trays on a Garland propagator tray which gives a little bit of heat from the bottom to kick start the germination. I inspect them every day for the tiny pinpricks of green that make your heart sing.

Divide snowdrops: I went to a friend’s the other day to shoot a video for H&G and we had such a lovely time wandering round in the rain looking at her snowdrops. We are without doubt turning into eccentric old galanthophiles. She had not a single snowdrop in her garden when she first arrived 25 years ago and now there are swathes of them because each year she divides all the clumps to help spread them around. It couldn’t be easier to do. Just dig up a clump as the flowers are going over, tease the bulbs apart, and replant them immediately in groups of three or five. Before you know it, the gaps between those clumps will have filled in as the snowdrops naturally increase. If you plant different types, you’ll also find new hybrids with different characteristics popping up. It’s addictive, I warn you

.

Order dahlias: If you haven’t already ordered dahlias, now is the time. Once you get the brown, slightly unpromising-looking tubers, you can plant them straight away in pots if you have somewhere under cover to keep them, or wait until mid May to plant them straight into the ground. Putting them into pots first can give them a head start, and the idea is you get them into the ground as sizeable plants towards the end of May. The world’s your oyster when it comes to which varieties to choose. I tend to err towards marmalady colours, or deep almost-black reds. I wrote about the ones I’ve ordered this year in a previous post. You can also order other summer-flowering bulbs for spring planting, including gladioli, nerines, crocosmia and other more unusual things from online companies like Peter Nyssen, Farmer Gracy or Sarah Raven.

Cut back perennials and grasses: this might not immediately stand out as a cheering task, but I promise you, as soon as there is a proper sunny day it becomes an absolute pleasure. It’s hard work, but if you tackle small areas at a time, it isn’t too onerous. Cut back perennials just above the base to allow the new shoots to emerge unfettered. Last year I tried the chop and drop method, which I wrote about in last Feb’s diary post but this year I’m going back to old fashioned mulching. I love the idea of leaving all the stems around your plants to rot down gradually, but the reality was that we had a very dry spring last year which meant things just didn’t break down much, so it looked messy for quite some time. But the main reason is that it didn’t provide the moisture retention that a thick compost mulch can.

Chit potatoes: this IS cheering and requires minimal effort. Chitting potatoes isn’t strictly necessary but it helps to prepare them for planting in March and gives them a head start. All you have to do is buy your seed potatoes and leave them eyes upwards in a tray or egg box. You’ll be able to see the eyes as small brown marks on the potatoes, and this is where the shoots emerge from. While it’s perfectly possible to grow potatoes that you’ve found sprouting at the back of your pantry, it’s much better to buy certified seed potatoes as you’ll get better yields. Shop bought potatoes may have been treated with growth inhibitors or be carrying virus.

Looking back to look forwards: At this time of year I always love looking back at photographs of the garden as it was at its very best in late June or early July. It seems unfeasible that it will be this full of colour in a few months’ time - but it will. It would be boring, wouldn’t it, if we had no seasons and we had this level of colour all year round? I always remember Tom Stuart-Smith saying that once, when I he was showing me round one of his vast perennial gardens. We need the lull to fully appreciate the incredible lifecycle of our plants, and that sense of anticipation is building with every week that goes by.

Thanks for reading, and I’d love to hear your comments on what you’re up to in the garden this February wherever you are.

Leave a comment

January 25th

I take advantage of the fact it’s not raining and get started on the rose pruning. Having gone from a single climbing rose (hence the quote above) to at least 10 now dotted around my garden, I’m a recent rose convert. In the past I’ve been less keen on them - partly because I was (and still am) a little unsure about their pruning regimes, and partly because I perceived them as old fashioned, at least the shrub rose types. Climbers and ramblers were OK - more romantic and free, somehow. The upper crust British rose garden, with shrub roses planted together in a monoculture, standing stiffly in bare soil, was not my thing.

But then I began to see roses being planted in different ways: in long meadow grass at Easton Walled Garden; beautifully trained over willow structures in Arne Maynard’s garden; and placed elegantly in herbaceous borders in Susanne Cooper’s wonderful garden at Upper Sydling Manor (known as Dorset Walled Garden). It was this garden, in fact, that firmly tipped me the other way, and made me want to start incorporating roses into my own garden.

Read more

January 18th

A new snowdrop and early plant sale is happening in a local village hall. Organised by Paul Barney who owns the excellent Edulis Nursery nearby, it is full of snowdrop fanatics (or galanthophiles as they are known) who have travelled miles to see snowdrop collections from Paul as well as one of the country’s most renowned snowdrop specialists, Joe Sharman. I have known about this man for many years but have never met him, and I go a bit tongue tied when I come across him shoehorned into a corner of the hall. His huge collection of plants is displayed in black plastic crates, meticulously named and priced so you know exactly where you are. I immediately spot one that costs £200. Yes, £200 for a single tiny flowering snowdrop, a measure of how these plants have become such collectors’ items. Only the most zealous plant nuts would pay this, surely. I settle for one called ‘Benton Magnet’ (above) that costs a mere £10. I’m writing about Cedric Morris and his garden at Benton End at the moment so anything that derives from his garden is interesting to me.

‘I don’t get snowdrops,’ says Sheila. ‘They all look the same to me. Isn’t it better when you just see the ordinary ones in swathes under trees?’ Maybe that last bit is true, but they certainly don’t all look the same, and in the past few years I have become quite addicted to them. I have a growing collection in the border at the back of the garden, and I want to introduce more under the oak tree. It’s really easy to spread them around and swap with friends - once they are established enough to start forming clumps, after three or four years, you can dig them up when they have finished flowering, pull the clumps gently apart and replant the bulbs wherever you see fit. They are obliging little things that like a moist but well-drained soil and partial shade. I grow them nestled at the bottom of shrubs in the border, where they are shaded over in the summer.

Back at Paul Barney’s display I’m head down examining all the snowdrops when I feel an arm going round my shoulder. It’s Dan Pearson, who has driven all the way from Bath to come to the sale. Snowdrops are definitely his thing. He is planting more and more along the banks and field edges of his hilly nine-acre plot. ‘I’ve been growing them in trial areas on the cool side of hedges to test whether they are ‘doers’ and then moving the best to the garden if they show that they have the potential to bulk up and have dependability and vigour,’ he says. ‘I have never been a collector of anything and this is the first time I’ve been hooked. It’s all about finding the finest and strongest plants that you can see from a standing position are something special. No dwindlers.’

Read more

January 11th

This has been a week of hugging the fire and dreaming of spring and summer. The sparkling blue skies of last week were replaced by low, grey skies and endless rain. The dogs get me outside, always a good thing. I walk along the Ridgeway, the least muddy of my regular routes, and despite the clouds, my mood lifts. Tangles of rose hips, hawthorn and old man’s beard arch over the path, and dozens of tiny field fares bounce from thicket to thicket in front of me. The route back takes me along the edge of an uncultivated field, the seed heads of wild carrot, sorrel and cow parsley swaying in infinite shades of brown. The biggest treat, almost missed, comes when I look back over my shoulder right at the end of the walk and see a pair of hares sitting on their haunches watching me from the field. I stand stock still, but the dogs come back to see what I’m looking at, and the hares flee. Hares and owls. I love all wildlife but I feel a special connection with hares and owls and I’m not sure why.

Back by the fire, I sit down with my laptop ready to order my dahlias. ‘You’re in my chair,’ says my husband, half joking, half serious. We have two armchairs by the wood burner in the kitchen, and like a couple of old geriatrics, we often bicker about who gets which chair. The prime spot is right by the fire in the chair that used to belong to my grandmother. With braid coming off and frayed edges, it desperately needs re-upholstering, but I almost don’t want to change it as it won’t be hers any more.

Dahlia ordering is a task to be savoured. I often make notes about plants through the year on my phone and I remembered I’d seen a few gorgeous dahlias at Yeo Valley Organic Garden in September and one in the garden at Iford, so I search my phone for the photos. Luckily I had photographed the labels too. These are the ones that I now try to track down:

Read more

Hello everyone. I’m trying a new diary format this week to shape my posts. It’s a way of sharing more about what I’m doing - where I go, who I meet, what I’m writing about - and I hope it will give you the information, ideas and inspiration that you are here for. The good thing about Substack is that I can be completely responsive to what you want - so if you’d like me to cover certain things just let me know. You can send a message on the Substack app and I’d love to hear your comments over the next few weeks about this new format.

January 3rd

It’s Saturday and the alarm goes off at 5am which feels brutally early after a very lazy Christmas. It’s pitch black and icy outside but I’m instantly awake and excited as I’m about to go on a garden shoot, which hasn’t happened for a while. Andrew Montgomery and I have decided we want more wintry gardens to add to another edition of our book Winter Gardens so we’re meeting at Corsley Manor in Wiltshire at 7am. I arrive before him (unusual) and it’s still completely dark. The temperature says -4C but I’m worried the frost isn’t frosty enough. As soon as Andrew arrives he jumps into my car. ‘What’s happened to the bloody frost? I can’t believe it.’ He goes into a deep conversation about the optimum conditions for frost - humidity, dew, wind levels - before we see that the inky blackness has a hint of indigo blue. It’s time to get going.

Corsley has the most amazing wave lawn - a simple, bold design decision that turns the English country house lawn on its head - and I’ve been longing to capture it in the frost or snow. I immediately head over to have a look and in the semi darkness I can see that there is a silvery frost on the ground but hardly any covering the lumpy yew topiary that runs alongside. No! In my mind’s eye, it was all going to be perfectly draped in a sparkling frost.

Read more

Happy New Year! I send you all my best wishes for 2026 and I’m looking forward to sharing the next fulfilling and hopefully productive gardening year with you.

I have just gone through the photos I’ve taken over the past year and it makes me realise how very lucky I am to have a life that revolves around plants and gardens. There are so many seams of interest to tap into, from the environment and ecology to botany, art and sculpture, and so many fascinating people to meet who are always happy to share their ideas and knowledge. It’s the reason I’m still in my job after 21 years at House & Garden this February. I know we can’t bury our heads in the sand about the bad stuff going on in the world - and there is so much of it at the moment - but I do think gardening and just being outside in nature can help us to refocus on the positive things in life.

Looking back I realise that 2025 was a particularly amazing year in terms of garden visits. I went to Babylonstoren in South Africa, visited gardens around Bruges in Beligum, hiked in the Alps, went on a wine-led road trip around Europe and travelled to British gardens from Northumberland to Cornwall. And I realise that there are so many things to take away from these trips that I haven’t yet shared with you here on Substack.

So my plan this year is to intersperse diary-style posts with these garden trips, including my own plant observations and design ideas gleaned along the way. My diary posts might be a bit more random this year, including jottings on my daily walks and nature notes, people I meet, and general (usually garden-related) observations; I want you to get to know me more, to find out what makes me tick. I’ll still be posting plant profiles, planting combinations and lists of all the plants that I come across and love - but there may be a bit more of me coming through too.

Meanwhile, my first post for 2026 is a round-up of the past year in pictures, with a few notes on where I’ve been and what I took away. Warning: this is a long post so sit down by the fire and find a few spare minutes with a cup of tea! It will be too long for an email, so you may have to go onto the Substack App to keep reading….

January

I started 2026 off in the Alps with blue skies and deep snow, and then back home to a few fleeting days of ice and frost before everything thawed - and not a single significant frost after January 9th.

February

A visit to Ashwood Nurseries in the Midlands to see their famous hellebores - plus a tour round the garden. You need to book their hellebore days but they are well worth it - and you won’t be able to resist buying a few new plants.

At the end of February I was lucky enough to go on a press trip to South Africa, staying at the wonderful Babylonstoren hotel. The gardens there are astonishing and part of the whole experience, with productive as well as ornamental gardens. We went on a fabulous botanising trip into the Karoo with Babylonstoren’s plant experts Ernst van Jaarsveld and Cornell Beukes to discover succulent plants that would be appearing in the Newt’s Chelsea garden that year. One of the best things about the trip was meeting Heidi Bertish, South African H&G’s garden editor, who I have been corresponding with for many years, pictured above right.

March

I went up north to Newcastle for my son’s birthday and as always used it as an excuse to visit a few gardens. I enjoyed Howick Hall very much, with its amazing collection of trees and swathes of daffodils (look out for an autumn feature later in the year) and also revisted Chatsworth (in the pictures above) for some early spring planting inspiration.

April

In April I went to speak at the Cornish Spring Flower Show and took the opportunity to go back to The Lost Gardens of Heligan. The walled productive garden was looking neat and tidy but relatively empty at that time of year, but the rhododendrons were out in the jungle garden (above) and the tree ferns spectacular.

Towards the end of the month I went on a trip to Belgium with photographer Eva Nemeth to photograph two gardens. The first was the intriguing, slightly neglected garden of the late sculptor Jef Claerhout; the second Bonemhoeve, a private garden set out around a series of waterways, notable for its collection of sculpture as well as its artistic interventions in the landscape (see images both above and below of Bonemhoeve).

One of the most memorable garden visits in April was to Plas Cadnant Hidden Gardens on Anglesey. I took my parents who hadn’t been before and they absolutely loved it. My dad has dementia so going round gardens is a lovely thing to do with him. Afterwards, he had no memory of going to the garden but this teaches you to live in the moment. I love seeing him happy.

May

I went north again on a Garden Museum trip and to stay with Julia Kirkham. A garden designer, Julia used to live in this part of the world but she recently moved up north to take over a rather remarkable garden originally designed by Tom Stuart Smith. The garden at Cogshall Grange (above) was published in House & Garden a few years ago, so I was amazed when Julia told me she was moving there. She is now developing the garden in different ways and it was interesting to see what she’s doing.

On the same visit, we went to see the garden at Manley Knoll, created in the early 1900s to go with an arts & crafts house. There are formal gardens immediately around the house, but turn the corner and you find yourself in the most amazing, sheltered quarry garden.

May is also Chelsea month. I have many, many pictures from Chelsea this year, but here is one of me, taken by Ukrainian photographer Maria Savoskula, and another of me with Hatta Byng, who sadly left House & Garden in June, where she had been Editor for eleven years. I haven’t missed a single Chelsea for about 30 years. I nearly did once, when I accidentally booked a holiday just after I had come back from maternity leave, but managed to change my flight. My husband and in-laws went off with the children and I followed a day later!

June

I’m pleased to see that most of my photos were of my own garden in June (above) when it is looking its best (including the newly clipped wave laurel hedge at the back!) but I did go on a garden outing with the local horticultural society to Earlstone Manor near Newbury (below). I’d been before, to photograph it in winter for my book Winter Gardens, but wanted to go back to see how its eccentric and tirelessly creative owner, Bruce Ginsberg, had developed the garden since my last visit. It is an extraordinary masterpiece of topiary made over many years.

I also went to Caisson gardens in Somerset (I highly recommend going on one of their open days in April, May or June) and Benton End in Suffolk, where the garden is being restored and will be opened this spring. I’ll be writing features on both these gardens in House & Garden this year.

July

By mid July, British gardens were starting to look quite parched, and I flew off to Italy where bizarrely the weather was much cooler. I was visiting the most lovely and welcoming couple, Ryan and Nicola, who have a shop in Milan called Via Vicolo Mameli. I’m writing a lifestyle piece on them for H&G this year, and went with photographer Dean Hearne to their gorgeous Umbrian home, a small stone farmhouse that they are gradually restoring. They are making a garden there too, and were hungry for ideas. It was Dean’s birthday on the final day so they made a cake - so sweet!

One garden that looks fabulous whatever time of year you visit is Great Dixter and I took my mum and sister there in July after a talk I was doing at Charleston the day before.

August

A visit to Bruern Abbey in Gloucestershire at the beginning of the month (above) and a lovely lunch with garden designers Angel Collins and Butter Wakefield, joined by Charles Rutherfoord and Rupert Tyler. Angel designed the gardens at Bruern and they were looking absolutely stunning, despite the summer drought.

Earlier in the year Mat and I had had our 25th wedding anniversary so we held a party in August - in the garden of course! Theme: Flower Power.

And then at the end of August we joined two of my three sisters and their partners on a walking weekend in the Alps. We walked 26 miles over two days and everyone else was getting fed up with me as I kept stopping to photograph the plants… I need to go back in spring!

September

I went for lunch with Jinny Blom and had a brief wander around her garden in Headington, which she has recently redesigned (above). Pathways of elegant Belgian bricks and tumbling, drought-tolerant planting. She gave me some salvias she’d grown from cuttings, now planted out in my garden.

September was a busy time for talks - I gave a talk about my book Pastoral Gardens at the Garden Museum Literary Festival held at Iford Manor this year, and had time to explore the gardens (above). I also spoke at the inaugural Yeo Valley Garden Festival which was a great success and back on next year as a result.

My friend Kim Fleming and I have started what will hopefully be an annual lunch for flower farmers, garden designers, garden writers and other horticultural women. It’s held at dahlia time on Kim’s flower farm in the bucolic Berkshire Downs (above) and this year there were 25 of us, including garden designers Emily Erlam, Non Morris and Polly Wilkinson, Rachel de Thame, the Land Gardeners, garden editor Tiffany Daneff and flower farmer Georgie Newbery. It was such a lovely event, cosy and atmospheric in the polytunnel as the rain hammered down. I also took the chance to get a photo of my son and nephew who were working on the flower farm this summer!

October

I went on a hugely enjoyable shoot in mid October to meet Jonny Bruce, who is opening an exciting new nursery next year near Cirencester. I took the dogs with me and they had the best day with his two dogs, and we all helped to rake over and remove stones from a new nursery bed. He is developing stock beds and a garden that will showcase his range of perennials.

I also had to do a quick dash up north, as we decided at the last minute to run a feature on Luciano Giubbilei’s new walled garden at Raby Castle in Country Durham (which you can read in the current issue of House & Garden). It is the most remarkable remodelling of a garden I have seen recently, in the most spectacular setting, and the gardens were still looking ravishing in their autumn guise.

Towards the end of the month I helped plant up a garden at the children’s former school. It was a garden made in memory of Edward, a friend of my son’s who tragically died in a car accident four years ago, and I helped design the planting scheme with a friend. On the planting day, Ed’s mother had gathered together a huge crowd of helpers, and it was the most uplifting thing seeing everyone come together to remember Ed and support the family. I’m hoping to be involved in the garden over the next year and perhaps oversee a gardening club with some of the current schoolchildren.

December

At the beginning of December I helped make wreaths for Maggie’s that were sold at our annual Christmas Maker’s Market - always something I enjoy doing. This year we had so much foraged foliage and lots of berries after the sunny summer and warm autumn.

Then at last, my gardening year can wind down, but things still carry on in my own garden. On December 30th this year a stray package of tulip bulbs arrived from Farmer Gracy, so I spent the last few hours of the year stuffing bulbs in the ground before it got too frosty. A last hurrah before 2026 gets going.

Well, I feel quite exhausted after romping through my own gardening year, so thanks for bearing with me, and I’m looking forward to sharing more (perhaps more concisely) in 2026!

Clare x

Share

This week, I bring you some edited snippets from an article I wrote on one of the most well known - and controversial - gardens in Britain, The Laskett, created by Sir Roy Strong. Photographer Andrew Montgomery took these photographs on a wintry February day in 2016, including some brilliant portraits, most of which weren’t used in the original article. Full of theatricality and topiary with not much laissez faire to soften the edges, it’s not the kind of garden I am normally drawn to, but you can’t help but marvel at the imagination and tenacity of the couple who turned a bare field into such a complex work of art.

Read more

More wintry scenes for you this week from Winter Gardens. Designed by Tom Stuart-Smith, Broughton Grange is one of the most stunning gardens I have seen in winter, with incredible structure to draw the eye. We visited it on an icy-cold, misty day when the huge yew and hornbeam topiaries stood dramatically against a leaden backdrop, emerging and then partially disappearing as the mist swirled around us. The following is an extract about the garden from the book, with photographs by Andrew Montgomery, most of which are outtakes from the book.

‘I have always wanted the garden in winter to look like it is in the full grip of the cold and not in a state of seasonal denial.’ Tom Stuart-Smith

Imposing beehive domes of copper beech loom up out of the mist in the Walled Garden at Broughton Grange, their shapes contrasting with a chessboard of Irish yews silhouetted black against the sky. Designed by Tom Stuart-Smith in 2000, this extraordinary stage-set of a garden was created from nothing, landscaped from a sloping paddock and carved into three terraces, with walls, gates and garden buildings designed by Ptolemy Dean.

Read more

For the next few Christmas weeks I’ve picked out three gardens to show you from my book Winter Gardens. Now out of print, the book was self published in 2021, with photographs by Andrew Montgomery, including 12 contrasting gardens that I had selected for their winter interest. Some were chosen for their evergreen bones and topiary, others for their seed heads or winter blooms. I start with one of my favourites, Dan Pearson’s garden in Somerset, which I have visited a number of times in different seasons. It is full of interest whatever time of year you see it.

Dan leaves his perennial borders intact over winter, and when we photographed it on a frosty, foggy day, they looked spectacular. You have to adjust your eye to this state of semi-collapse and decay, but to me, there is a huge amount of beauty in the gentle chaos of the scene. My conversations with Dan about the garden in winter were fascinating, revealing a deep connection with nature and the seasons, and his ability to slow down and minutely observe what is happening, day by day, in his garden. The chapter is reproduced below, with photographs from the book - as well as some outtakes from Andrew’s shoot. (Andrew also photographed my book, Pastoral Gardens, as well as two beautiful cook books, The Irish Kitchen and The Irish Bakery, available on the Montgomery Press website).

Read more