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. Shame, as I was primed for a mega, OCD-fuelled 'how clean is your plot' session. But I know it's just a matter of waiting - the tidy up is postponed but not forgotten!

irises.I digress; my favourite roses at the moment are the Hybrid Musk roses. They were mostly bred by the Rev. Joseph Pemberton in the early 20th Century and make great shrubs and small climbers. They are soft coloured, like cowrie pink 'Penelope', clean

higher odds on getting a hard frost which, I think, is even more beautiful. Snow blankets and muffles the features in the garden turning all a soft virgin white - even rubbish heaps and messy areas are suddenly transformed into something clean

could resist their charms? Petals surround a bold clump of stamens, looking so clean and productive that they're certain to pollinate and produce seed.That northerly wind is cold and bracing, and while I'd love to stay outside and admire them for longer

- but a shaft of sunlight through the scattered pondweed shows the dancing hordes of water fleas. The water is clear and clean so I'm expecting great things in coming months.I spent a lot of time in the garden on Sunday and Bank Holiday Monday. Why

'Lucifer' and all the hostas are taking the long walk.By all means leave as much as you can but keep looking and selecting. The autumn clean-up is not a matter of manically chopping down everything now but of slowly and steadily editing things out through

of parsnips for me, as one of Paul's lovely customers, Glyn, a keen allotmenteer from Colerne, popped in with a freshly harvested bag of them from his plot. He reckons they’re the best parsnips he’s ever grown – they’re so clean, white, canker

it's good to be getting something back into the lovely, clean beds. Hopefully, with the belated April showers we've been having lately, the seedlings will be up and away at a rate of knots, and young plants will be covering the ground before the weeds

sprout a shoot and become a strong new plant. A few years ago, in a desperate effort to get rid of both bindweed and couch grass from the border, I dug out all the plants and virtually sieved the soil clean of every last filament of weed root I could see

Are your roses martyrs to disease? Are their leaves covered with black spots or a white overcoat of powdery mildew? Well, I'll come clean and put my hand up on both counts. Much depends on the time of year and whether it's wet or dry - but, most