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as cut flowers). I saw them at the base of street trees, gleefully mixed in with bright chrysanthemums and lipstick-pink cyclamen. Not  a very conventional mixture but certainly striking.There are variations: this one has a good solid evergreen box edge

that are being groomed - already -  for displays at next year's RHS Flower Shows.Herbs are one of the few things that can be used the whole way through the winter. A pot of rosemary, some mint (Egyptian mint is, apparently, the most evergreen) and a bay tree

what the mysterious scrambling plant with White trumpet like flowers was. As you have probably guessed, it was a fine specimen of convolvulus, or common bindweed.The next trauma to hit their nascent efforts was the cabbage white butterfly, which

pursuit of horticultural titbits to amuse readers of this blog. A lot of the island is covered with what is known as Machair - sandy soil, scrubby grass and wild flowers - which, although past its first flush of youth by this time of year, is very lovely

knives, the hoe, the brick, trousers, the egg or the polka dot bikini.Sure it has got a great deal lighter (I used to own an old wooden one like this and you would not want to push it very far) but it is intrinsically the same.In the 1970s James Dyson

? Or the apple that Paris gave to Aphrodite (which decision eventually led to ten years of Trojan War)? Well, anyway, the apples in question were almost certainly quinces. They have the most beautiful coy pink flowers in spring followed by fruit that are about

. 'Ballerina' - soaring orange T. 'Negrita' - beetroot coloured T. 'Queen of the Night' - dark and truly gorgeous T. 'Anthraceit' - flowers like the backsides of turkeys (but prettier) T. tarda - early and peppery scentedI could go on for ever but it would

things in the garden still look wonderful - for example the beech columns that are glowing in the winter sunlight, some gorgeous skeletal seedheads (Calamagrostis x acutiflora 'Karl Foerster' and Datisca cannabina) and even some flowers left (especially

and it is one of my great pleasures. The dark green leaves go perfectly with the aged brick, in the spring it is covered with frothy white flowers and come the autumn the branches are laden with red berries. When the hard frosts come we then have a wonderful

to pruning. Some of you might remember the Fortnum and Mason garden designed by Robert Myers at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2007. The building at the back of the garden was covered with trained liquidambars and very effective it was.There are many reasons you