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(Patron Saint of Gardeners) never impulse shopped in nurseries. I had not seen the plant before, all I knew was that it was quite large and had been planted in the middle of my carefully planned flower bed. Hmmmm...some designers would have thrown a bit

about gardens and dream of seasons as yet unborn. There's a vast choice of stuff out there to keep us amused, from newspaper garden supplements and magazines to books both large and small. I have shelves full of them; some old and some new. How

on the island has a garden open to the public which has some fantastic trees and rare shrubs (including good collections of Olearias - particularly the exotically named phlogopappa and Rhododendrons). One part of the garden is called the Lighthouse garden

pests out there which we, in Britain, will never have to deal with in our gardens.For example in Trinidad there is a large ant (about 1cm long) called a bachak that will (along with a few hundred friends) quickly demolish a garden. They even eat onions

.There'll be about 20 large show gardens at the show this year, each one costing around £250,000 each. The main criticism one hears is that this kind of thing is completely unrealistic and bears no relation whatsoever to most peoples' gardens. On one level

Gardeners (like opposition politicians) quite enjoy a bit of a moan. In the case of politicians then almost any excuse will do: for gardeners it is usually the weather. It's seldom perfect and in recent weeks all of us have had more rain than

many of my clever plans for the winter garden have come to nothing.Things that were supposed to look sparkly and incandescent in the low light and frosty mornings are now lying in a crumpled heap like laundry in a teenager's bedroom.In particular I have

the window at back gardens whizzing by at 70mph. It's also always interesting to see which plants flourish in the no-man's-land of railway embankments. At this time of year there's a dense covering, largely undisturbed by man (apart from the occasional

A few weeks ago I wrote about trees for small gardens. Among the comments (well, to be honest, 33% of the comments) was a request from Daphne for very, very small trees - "very small being up to three metres".Tricky. Three metres is barely a shrub

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