Electric Green

'Diamonds and Rust' by Tony Smith at RHS Hampton Court 2011. Brings new meaning to smoking grass Small son has been helping with the gardening. Mistook runner beans for bindweed. Runner beans not looking quite so fine and healthy anymore. It is a pity. They were romping up an arch over the path as a catch crop, growing ahead of the roses and clematis that will eventually cover it. All very on trend. The idea was to create an exciting and decorative edible tunnel with a nod to Victorian ornamentals. Fortunately some escaped the depredations of well meaning infants so the vision may yet be realised. Just back from a lovely day at RHS Hampton Court Palace Flower Show, I had supper in the garden and, mangled bits aside, for the first time it seemed like it is not doing too badly. The roses are flowering, I am very excited about the Hemerocallis that I got from Waddesdon Plant Centre earlier in the year and the designed bits outnumber the randomly-gone-to-see...

The spiky space-flowers of Allium christophii I rarely do anything by halves and  with my current drive to finish planting up the garden, my plant bender continues. With the hefty swag of roses planted this spring establishing nicely, I am filling the spaces between. Before Christmas, I received a very exciting box of bulbs from De Jager containing,  inter alia , alliums. Now I have not had much success with alliums so far (I know not why, probably buying rubbish bulbs in the first place) but they are a wonderful thing. The first time I exhibited at Chelsea , I left the showground on the final day staggering under the weight of flowers blagged from nursery exhibitors and went home to live in a room that, for a while, resembled a floral marquee. So having got the fat, promising-looking bulbs into pots and soil, I loved and nurtured them; watered them, coaxed them, glared at them and generally willed them to perform. And perform they have. Allium christophii ...

Spring flowers I am having a last ditch attempt to plant a specimen tree in my front garden, which is very well-drained and north facing - although the bit by the road does get the sun. Lavender and sage love it and the Malus sargentii is doing well with much food, mulch and love, but the corner of near the gate is proving recalcitrant. It has already claimed two victims, a Hamamelis and a magnolia, and I am having a final go with another magnolia (but not the one from a few blogs ago, a new and different one) before I move on to plan B (although I am not yet sure what that would be). Anyway, I have chosen a much smaller plant so its needs are not immediately so great. I dug a big hole, oooh at least three or four times as big as the pot. And I made up a magic mix of compost, some of the soil from the hole, pelleted chicken manure, some Carbon Gold biochar and a shake of swell-gel to hold water. The idea is to get it going in a lovely, moist, nutrient rich environment which will ...

Tulips 'Abu Hassan' and 'Queen of Night' and some gatecrashers With all this lovely warmth has come lots of lovely plant growth, which is great as I have 12 new plants in one border alone...although this does have watering implications. My neighbour’s wisteria is coming into flower and smells wonderful and my tulips are looking fantastic too, especially my favourite ‘Abu Hassan’ and inky ‘Queen of Night’. I always heard that ‘Queen of Night’ was a bit effete and would fade out after a couple of years but these have bucked the trend and multiplied by half, so all good there. When I visit beautiful gardens for work, I often discover a gardener inspired by Sarah Raven and her colour schemes. One of her tips is, apparently, that one should arrange flowers like a wedding – a big one as a bride, several smaller ones that echo the form of the big one as bridesmaids, some other stuff as guests and then add a gatecrasher – a contrasting, uninvited flower to shake the whole...

Herbs at Sheepdrove Organic Farm I walked the long way home by the canal yesterday just because it was there, all narrow boats, sunlight and ducklings (ahhh!) and blackthorn blossom blowing into the water. Soon I am going to the official launch of the National Gardens Scheme Yellow book, a genteel and pleasant occasion and I am looking forward to seeing my NGS friends. It is perverse. The more there is to blog about, the less time there is to do so and vice versa. On the work front there are places to go and people to see and on the garden front it is all getting going in a very exciting fashion. My car has very rudely gone bang, which means that my garden centre list is starting to get slightly out of control. I try and exercise extreme restraint at all times, but right now I want to get pelletted chicken manure and two Lonicera fragrantissima and a cardoon and a small shrub rose and a couple of dark orange Erysimum and some candelabra primulas and an evergreen shrubby thin...

A fluffy bud of Magnolia x loebneri 'Leonard Messel' It has been an absolutely cracking weekend for gardening. Roses propped, check. Trees pruned, check. Seeds sown, yup. Little hide built for dustbin, uh huh. As part of the plan to divide the back garden into different parts and create a sense of journey and surprise (TM), I have got a new garden arch to go across the path just the other side of the apple tree. When things dry up a bit I will paint it my regulation shade of soft aqua but I have got the plants in anyway – a box ball provides a punctuation point at the base of the arch and the beginning of the border and rose ‘Ena Harkness’ will romp up it, adding to the hot colour scheme in that particular bed. Next to that I put in the Hemerocallis ‘Burning Embers’ that I impulse bought, along with Magnolia x loebneri 'Leonard Messel', at Waddesdon Plant Centre the other night while attending the launch of the regional Berkshire and Buckinghamshire NGS booklet. ...

 Spreads of snowdrop Galanthus nivalis at Welford Park in Berkshire  Anyway, there I was at 7am last Saturday listening to one of those compilations with a title like 'The Essential Power of Ultimate Music, Ever', on my way to a hot date to talk gardening with BBC Radio Berkshire, when up pops Alice Cooper’s ‘Poison’. You know: I want to love you but I better not touch (Don't touch) /I want to hold you but my senses tell me to stop/I want to kiss you but I want it too much (Too much) /I want to taste you but your lips are venomous poison. etc. Driving when one should be sleeping leaves plenty if time to be pedantic about artistic licence. As any fule kno, but possibly not as any snake-fancying rock icon kno, poison is not in itself venomous. Venomous animals use fangs or a sting to inject their venom which is a biotoxin. Poisons can be absorbed, ingested or inhaled and need not be organic. Technically, wasps are venomous while poison arrow frogs are, well, poisono...