Fagus sylvatica 'Mercedes' is a classy beech of modest size - we got ours as a free gift before we left the UK, but it is popular and...

I hate to bore people with so many Japanese maples at this time of year, but some are so distinctive that they just beg to be shared. We...

My brief annual family visit to the UK always takes in a day in Hay on Wye with my brother, and a day in a great garden with our son....

After being a negligent Cyclamen grower for years (get seed, plant, label and forget!) I'm trying to be a better one this year. A small...

One Friday recently I awarded myself a trip south to the other side of Angers to a 'Portes Ouvertes' at one of France's biggest producers...

'Conker trees are huge!' - not necessarily: if you love the colours of the genus Aesculus but don't want to hire a cherry picker to view...

Quercus palustris 'Isobel' - a dwarf 'swamp oak' - around 1m high after twelve years in the ground. Pretty most of the year, very...

- Ford Prefect's summing up of Planet Earth in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but it could equally apply to the family of shrubs...

'A dinosaur? You aren't THAT old.....?' ... but it sometimes feels like I am the last of a once widespread species, clergy who are...

For some years now an immense Rosa brunonii has cascaded down a bank in a sunny corner of our garden. Last year I spotted an interesting...

The warm weather is speeding the garden into mid summer! After church this morning I've spent the afternoon doing a 'now or never' move...

A great plantsman dismisses Deutzia outside their flowering season as 'a pile of leaves and brush'. I can see his point - they offer...

I have been 'taking stock' in my newly established Cyclamen house - this morning I've planted ten pots of different seeds to germinate in...

Different Deutzias have been flowering here for a couple of months now with the last few still starting to open, so I've been quietly...

One sign a garden is becoming mature is when plants start reproducing themselves. This is different from multiplying plants by the well...

The showiest roses tend to have their origins in exotic places, with China and India contributing a rich heritage. In commerce most roses...

Hardy geraniums (almost nothing to do with Pelargonium, most often seen in the form of the fleshy sub-shrub often called 'geranium' in...

Wandering around the garden with the camera late this afternoon I was struck by the stand-out effect of a rather gaudy Acer lighting up a...

While I'm certainly a maple fanatic, I have to admit I seem to be married to a rose fanatic, and I can see the attraction (of the...

Spring 2022 is proving a great one for hellebores ('Lent roses') - especially the many and varied forms of Helleborus x hybridus (until...