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, in the churchyard at Fortinghall, Perthshire, is estimated to be around 2000 years old, making it one of the oldest trees in Europe.Yew makes a fine hedge, which is how I plan to use my plants. It grows well on old wood, so you can keep your hedge in shape

Watch Monty Don's video demonstration of how to plant a yew hedge, with advice on drainage, planting distances and mulching.spring or autumnMore advice on plantingPlanting a bare-root rosePlanting a shrubBare-root plantingPlanting a bare-root tree

Once upon a time, many years ago, there was a field hedge near my house. A hedge consisting of about 60% hawthorn, with other shrubs added to make up the difference. At one time it was laid, trimmed and maintained but today just two trees remain

elsewhere for your hedging material. The RHS has a good list of hedging plants.If you still insist on growing leylandii then this is always an option, but please, please, please don't grow a variety called 'Harlequin', whose foliage looks like the aftermath

I might move house this year. It’s very early days, but the possibility of having a bigger garden is sending my plant-collecting gene into overdrive. I currently grow plants in my small, shady courtyard garden. But after four years of this, I long

-leaved shoots. They pop up all over the place and grow faster than the grass, so it's obvious when the lawn needs mowing.The shoots are the runners of one of my favourite plants, Salix exigua, or the coyote willow. This is about the tallest plant I have

that once planted, a bamboo will spread like a forest fire and forcibly colonise great chunks of garden. The truth is, as with all things in gardening, that if you choose the wrong plant for your situation then you are setting yourself up for tears

. This year hers is virtually hugging the roof of the house and has had about twenty flowers. Mine looks like a bedraggled hobo emerging from a rough night in a hedge and has had one flower. I did, however, plant another one in my mother-in-law's greenhouse

maple and has long been a stalwart of woodlands and hedges. This picture shows an unbearably ancient specimen, in a hedgerow. It has been laid more times than Xaviera Hollander over the decades; the trunk is extraordinary, both beautiful and slightly

to talk about them, but instead about the less well-known and less appreciated perennial sweet pea, Lathyrus latifolius. In a village near here it has colonised the sunny side of an old hedge, where it scrambles through the undergrowth and spills down a