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it comes to vegetables I am on far less stable ground. It is my wife who holds sway over the kitchen garden and who dictates what, why and when: I just do what I am told. But I have been reading quite a lot recently about forest gardens and it is here

of the hazel) play much the same game, as do many conifers and most grasses (albeit later in the year).I was reminded of all this botany by a peculiar event. We were sitting in my in-laws' kitchen, when suddenly it seemed that a great cloud of smoke blew across

I've been busy redesigning a great chunk of my garden. It's an important area, overlooked by our kitchen and bedroom windows, so it's the first thing I see every morning when I stagger out of bed. In contrast to the rest of the garden, it's always

and there are flurries of snow whipping off the roofs, and a rather disgruntled chicken is scuffling about like a well-wrapped babushka haggling in a street market in Minsk.Gardeners are obsessed with weather. It’s often too dry, too wet, too cold, too hot, not snowy

that need doing, before those little green shoots in the border suddenly crack on and need attention. It is amazing how forgiving a garden can be: if you dig foundations and make a mess now, the grass will recover and the plants will bounce back by summer

built himself from plants and hard landscape materials that he has begged and borrowed.I am not a manic vegetable grower (my wife is in charge of our kitchen gardening) but there is a very strong vegetable presence at the show. Tucked away down the end

I'm spluttering with indignation.In the dozen or so years that we've gardened here, I've boasted that we've been almost completely free of mammalian vermin: a rabbit emerged once but our two (very efficient) Tibetan terriers soon resolved

topiary. In the winter they provide structure and add tone; in the summer they seem like benevolent aunts standing stiffly, but attentively, above a gambolling chaos of flower and lawn.You don't need a huge stately garden to use topiary. In my garden I

I've just spent a fair bit of time trashing and destroying parts of my garden. I do this not out of irritation and frustration, nor have I temporarily lost control of my senses at the first sign of some half-decent weather. No, I do this because I

My garden - like yours - is looking fantastic at the moment. Plants that were just poking from cold ground a couple of months ago are now enormous and luxuriant. Bees buzz, roses overflow and lawns are lush.Rather than just brag, I thought I