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want early or late flowers, I suppose. Bees don't care either way and just want to get stuck in! The other annual climber of which I am very fond is Cobea scandens. My wife and I have a competition each year to see who can grow the best specimen

jolly day with some great plants (all of them clearly labelled), then you can't go wrong with Wisley.I was there a week or so ago to watch things grow: the whole garden thrums with the promise of approaching spring. There are, of course, the obvious

growing on a grassy bank. It has clear white flowers in summer and very prickly stems. I tend to hard prune some but not all, which means that we get a much longer flowering season. (The unpruned flower earlier.)This is the beginning of growth on a pear

to the rest of the garden. It is very easy to grow and there is another one planted just outside my office, so if I open the window and inhale … aaaaaahhh!I have sneaked a couple of other varieties. One is Philadelphus 'Belle Etoile', which is about 1.6m high

wins.Before the introduction of the potato to Europe in 1536, the parsnip was a much more mainstream vegetable than it is now. Parsnips are pretty easy to grow by sowing directly into the ground around March and April - dig the ground well as lumps

them in a bin with some water in the hope that they will drown.In spite of all this sweeping I know that soon there will be baby ash seedlings popping up all over the garden. They are fine if you get them early enough but they don’t half grow fast when

to remember to do and deadhead about 75% and leave some of the hips, thereby getting the best of both worlds. These are quite big shrubs, which grow to approximately 1.5m height and spread; the foliage is glossy (slightly bronzed when young) and the plants

plants, but Euonymus alatus was probably the first. Hailing from China and Japan, it is slow-growing, and deciduous. The greenish-white flowers appear in spring and, for much of the year, it is a green, innocuous-looking shrub.However, in autumn

goodness or the Olympics with all that stirring sportiness to occupy our minds - and also for the tantalising glimpses of the Olympic plantings of James Hitchmough, Nigel Dunnett and Sarah Price. Perhaps they will all be given baronetcies in tomorrow’s New

: The wood anemone. You don’t have to have a wood to grow this little plant. Underneath deciduous shrubs or in a shady corner will do fine. Also comes in white and a sort of washy pink. But I would stick with the first two.