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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

Summer may have started late following the June drenching, but it hasn't been a complete washout. One star performer in my garden has been a wonderful new osteospermum. I haven't grown them for a few years, but Osteospermum Sunny Philip caught my

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 blackfly to the tips of the plants, where all the fresh, new growth is (apparently blackfly produce the sweetest honeydew from the youngest leaves). This is all quite fascinating if you're something of an amateur entomologist - and most gardeners are

of miniaturized people, buildings and landscape, they seem overly large, but this is just an optical illusion.There is a stark contrast between the Model Village garden and my own. The former is intensively managed - weeded, clipped, tidied, mulched and tilled

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

Despite temperatures in my greenhouse dropping to zero at night but soaring by day, I've just got to get on with more seed sowing. Chillies and sweet peppers are top of my list. Last summer I had an outdoor electric socket installed for the garden

they love, so I spaced the plants more widely.Soon, the large bare areas between them started niggling me, and I planted a few compact courgettes in the spaces, along with some Tagetes 'Lemon Gem' to attract beneficial insects such as hoverflies. The adults

garden butterfly in this part of south-east London. But then, we are lucky to have lots of fairly large gardens down this way, and Dulwich is still the most wooded part of the metropolis. The caterpillars feed on grasses, particularly cock

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