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I have just got back from five fabulous days at Gardeners' World Live and, yet again, my garden has changed. The more attentive among you will remember my blathering on about the same subject when I got back from the Chelsea Flower Show

of our trees find themselves right now. Trees in bud.I thought of it after my wife pointed out how extraordinary the buds of the ash tree looked. She is right that they are initially charcoal grey and then open into strange purplish flowers like miniature

late summer flowering plant that will tolerate a bit of shade (provided it is not too dry). The pinky-purple flowers look like the mouths of giant carp. Gets to about 45cm high.Metasequoia glyptostroboides - the dawn redwood is a deciduous conifer from

and their exuberance. By 'big' I mean something that dwarfs its neighbours and reaches at least 2m high. I have five such plants in my garden.The first is Inula magnifica. I can see the cheerful, shaggy yellow flowers from my office and they never cease to amuse me

, indeed, an extraordinarily fine plant (I have it self seeding in the gravel outside my office). Pretty well everybody also knows about Verbena bonariensis which is one of the finest herbaceous plants ever invented: it flowers for ages (from about July

Spring is in the air. Birds are tweeting. Comfortable nests are being flung together. Plants are sprouting. Frogs are croaking lasciviously. Daffodils are flowering away with nothing less than gusto and the gloom of February fades into distant

and forgot about ... even though I had written it down. I have a largish group of the musk rose, 'Penelope', which flowers beautifully in June. If you leave it it will set some fine hips for the winter but there will be no more flowers. Last year I vowed

Korean chrysanthemums. (Moderation was not an abiding principle in the design of this garden.) Some in full flower, some in bud and in every colour you can think of except blue. At the entrance chrysanthemums blended beautifully with cannas, plectranthus

'Green Dream' - looks a bit like a hellebore but taller.Nipponanthemum nipponicum - this last I chose because the name amused me but also because it is really late flowering. It has leathery leaves and pretty white flowers in October.Sadly, things have

fruit but also for flowers and autumn leaf colour. They are pretty useless as a food crop, except that they do make the most delicious crab apple jelly that goes well with lamb, pork and poultry. However, they are really useful as a pollinator for many