Veg Plotting

Jean's lovely book looks perfectly at home in my Wild and Woolly Lawn - my original plan was to photograph some of the insects featured, but Covid means I've been watching and reading lots about them instead. It's been great to use the fab photos in this book as a  spotter's guide the past few days. The review bus has ambled down the lane and I'm delighted I'm the next stop on the blog tour for Jean Vernon's latest book Attracting Garden Pollinators . It's great to have a volume which covers all kinds of insect pollinators - as well as bees - as the importance of many of them is often overlooked for our gardens. In the opening chapters stuffed with fascinating insights we find: without wasps we wouldn't have any bees (they evolved from them); some bees nest in snail shells as well as thrushes liking to find them (the snails that is); and hoverflies are highly useful pollinators as well chomping away at those pesky aphids. Jean neatly shows how inte

... Epimedium aka barrenwort, bishop's hat or fairy wings. Here's another example of Sleep Creep Leap .  I planted my Epimediums two years ago and this is their first flowering. It was worth the wait. Whilst the blooms are tiny, they're plentiful and add grace to my revamped border at the bottom of the garden, where they thrive in the partial shade there. I really should have got down on my tummy for a better photo, thank goodness they also look pretty from above! The one pictured is 'Amber Queen'. I bought a bargain collection of 9 plants with three examples of each cultivar in the pack. 'Pink Elf' is just coming into bloom and therefore it's not quite ready to take a bow on Blooms Day.   Epimedium x versicolor 'Sulphureum' has yet to make its flowering debut; its name tells of yellow blooms to come. The heart shaped leaves turn bronze with age and thus makes this a year-round plant of interest. They're plentiful too, so I don't need

Monty Don in Phoenix, Arizona; Lotusland, California; and Monty in Central Park, New York. © Derry Moore.  What is an American Garden? asks Monty Don in the introduction to this lavish volume. The images above give us a clue to his unsurprising conclusion: America is simply too vast. The varied landscapes, climate, and people are too mind bogglingly wide to provide a definitive answer.  Dumbarton Oaks, Washington DC. © Derry Moore That doesn't mean we shouldn't try to find out and I'm pleased Monty Don did in both his TV series in January, and now in the follow-up book published earlier this week. I was due to visit America again for the latest Garden Bloggers' Fling , but of course Covid-19 put those plans on hold. It's great to do that from my armchair instead, especially as one of the gardens featured - The Lurie in Chicago - is one I was due to visit on my way to Wisconsin. Another garden - Dumbarton Oaks - was closed when I visited Washington DC in 2017, so I&#

Garden visits have been thin on the ground this year, so it was wonderful to have the opportunity this week to catch up with Charles Dowding at his (relatively) new property in Somerset and chat to him about his latest book. Rest assured that Covid guidance was adhered to and I found myself in a select group of bloggers, podcasters and garden writers for my visit, and not the 900-odd visitors who crowd into Homeacres for one of Charles's open days in normal years! Regular readers may remember I visited Charles at his previous property - Lower Farm - in 2012 for my VPs VIPs  interview and 52 Week Salad Challenge strands. Then it was February and the start of the sowing season; what a difference a September visit makes with Charles's abundant produce and flowers positively glowing with good health everywhere. I needed no second invitation to munch on the tomatoes in the polytunnel; they were delicious. Homeacres is a smaller property of around a quarter of an acre. Here the in

It's that time of the year again when there's the perfect excuse to pop into the garden for a break, a cuppa and to take part in the Big Butterfly Count . It's even better when your friend Jane Moore has written a book about them and invites you to join her where she works  to do the count there in the hotel's meadow. Of course mother nature conspired against us on Friday and produced the third hottest day of the year ever in the UK. As a result the butterflies decided to flutter off elsewhere with only the odd tired cabbage white or two plus a gatekeeper putting in a brief appearance during our time together. As you can see we retired to the gazebo instead to shelter from the heat and chat merrily away about the garden and all things butterfly. There was also time for a cuppa, where I spotted Jane's handy butterfly guide pinned to her notice board in the greenhouse. I also got the full tour of the hotel's three acre garden (you can also read Jane's guide h

2020 is proving to be a spectacular year for wildflowers, not just in terms of their abundance, but also for new ones popping up. A few weeks ago I spotted this newbie peeping out of the shade in our front side garden. A closer look and I'd instantly consigned it to a member of the deadnettle family owing to its nettle-like, hairy leaves without the familiar tingling sensation when touched. There my identification would have stayed; thank goodness for blogging and Wildflower Wednesday to encourage me to investigate further! A quick glance at Plantlife's information on the red dead-nettle and I could see straight away my initial ID was wrong owing to the rounder leaves and rather pink flowers. It doesn't have the distinctive markings of my garden's plant.  I turned to my trusty Francis Rose and found the answer within a couple of minutes in the form of exhibit A on the page. The leaves and distinctive flowers mark it out as hedge woundwort ( Stachys sylvatica ) inste

It's currently a real pleasure to walk on my lawn, not just because of the delicious feel of the cool grass on my toes, but also for this year's visual delights. There's an explosion of colour, and a new flower for my lawn compared to those I found for last year's #nomowmay survey  in the form of the pictured purple common self-heal . I didn't know much about this plant before it appeared in my garden, but having looked it up, it's an interesting addition. Its common name alludes to its use in herbal medicine, particularly to treat sore throats and halitosis and it's used regularly in Chinese medicine. It's also edible, so I have another potential salad ingredient at my feet in the shape of its stems and leaves. The bees love it too and it turns out it's an important plant for them as Jean Vernon told me on Twitter: "...it really helps as there is a huge June gap in terms of food plants for pollinators. So good you are seeing more bees."  Y

My WI Our Town group can't meet under Lockdown, so instead I set a task for everyone - who wants to - to keep a diary on the day we would have met. So far over 20 members have responded with quite different accounts of their ordinary day in the most extraordinary of circumstances. Here's the account of my day to join with them... My day starts with a walk round the garden after breakfast. I'm currently working out a mindful walk for a blog post to come - the idea is to provide a calming pause before the day's thoughts and emotions come crowding in. This scene's a little earlier to usual by a couple of weeks, probably due to April's sunniest on record. I'm used to coming back from Chelsea Flower Show later in May to find these clematis in full cry and they're currently my favourite part of VP Gardens . A bit of computer work followed by coffee on the patio with NAH. Thank goodness the weather's been mainly warm and sunny under Lockdown.

Like many of us under lockdown the past couple of weeks, I've had a bit of a spring clean, both in the home and the garden. Yesterday I turned my attention to a huge bag of garden stuff  accumulated over the years from various events and realised here was an opportunity to inject some fun into the garden. Our gardens are fast becoming our sanctuaries and a healing space for our times, but oh yes, some fun is needed now more than ever. I felt a little down on Friday and a cheerful task in the fresh air was just what I needed. Half an hour or so's work and my little flowerpot man now greets me as I step into the garden as do my welcome flowers. I rescued the arch from the bottom of the garden last year and decided it was crying out for the string of solar lights I'd found in my bag. Childlike I couldn't wait for it to get dark yesterday evening so I could admire my handiwork and was delighted the moon joined me for the photo session. Skipper and Spot are always ent