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on such small bits of card!Another is a series of fifty garden flowers ranging from delphiniums and water lilies to annuals like bright red salvias and candytuft. Each card has a bit of information and some hints about cultivation written by Richard Sudell - who

On Saturday I returned home after five days at the Chelsea Flower Show. As often happens when I return after being away at this time of year, everything has tripled in size, including the weeds. The winner is a rodgersia, which is now obstructing

as if hit by frost. It flowered extremely well but there are no pods and none of the exuberant growth". I didn't have much idea what could have caused this problem, so wasn't able to offer a useful solution.In a very spooky Twilight Zone moment, the very

to take matters into their own hands. We went out the other morning to discover both of them upended in the flower bed digging an enormous hole in an effort to chase down the offending mole. Sadly, though charming, they're not terribly good at either

. Their fundraising target for 2010 is £3m.You don't have to wait for the summer to start visiting gardens. At this time of year there are marvellous snowdrop and early-spring flower collections to visit. This coming weekend you could visit gardens from Wiltshire

, entwined together: a hawthorn (Crataegus monogyna) and a blackthorn (Prunus spinosa). This is a rather wonderful accident of nature, as the 'tree' flowers twice. The blackthorn begins in about March and the hawthorn takes over in May. In the autumn

of the last flowers.Anyway, I tell you all this not only to entertain you with tales of my day but also to demonstrate the fact that this garden teems with wildlife. Apart from those mentioned we have birds a-go-go, the odd hedgehog and there is a grass snake

grotesque.A smallish tree reaching only about 20m tall, the field maple has a bark as fissured as the face of W.H. Auden, with a slightly corky texture. The flowers are nothing much to write home about, being little greeny numbers that turn up at the same

-forgiving whiteness has gone and left behind it … well, a lot of soggy, mucky chaos. Hedges are staggering slightly after supporting all that weight and my flower borders look about as attractive as roadside ditches. I tend to leave my herbaceous plants standing

and have been fascinated by it ever since. It is not a friendly plant - in fact it is quite hostile when you get in close. The stubbly leaves can reach a diameter of about six feet and are supported by thick, thorny stems. The flowers are odd