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November is the month to plant tulips. There are few things more wonderful in this world than to cradle a tulip bulb in your hand; the rustling wispy-crispy skin and the smooth, slightly clammy flesh. Supremely organised and efficient gardeners

reading the paper - becomes more important than making decisions about where to plant bulbs. Silly really, but there you go.Fortunately, all is not lost. A good healthy tulip (by which I mean a bulb that is about the size of an egg and is firm of flesh

better against a pale background - the darker varieties in particular get a bit lost against the naked soil of February.These irises are terribly easy to grow: plant the bulbs in autumn at about twice their own depth and wait. Clumps can be divided

there are not enough, because I bet you a shiny 20p piece that in a couple of weeks, when they have died back and other things have doubled in size, that you will have completely forgotten.I plant a lot of bulbs every year for various clients — last autumn I had about

Looking at the bulb catalogue that is sitting on my desk as I write, I see that there are no fewer than one hundred and sixty one varieties of allium.These vary from the tall to the short, the deep purple to pale pink. Some have heads the size

available.2. Snowdrops: The first sign of life. Best not planted as bulbs, though. They should be planted in about March ‘in the green’. This means that they are dug up after flowering and planted then.3. Iris reticulata: really, really special. A gorgeous

stop to our normal November gardening routine. I would usually be spending jolly weekends doing a bit of light tidying, collecting the last of the autumn leaves and planting the last of the tulip bulbs. Instead we have been shoveling snow out

A few weeks ago I wrote about the redesign of part of my garden. It's going well — thank you for asking. One of the plants I mentioned was Nectaroscordum siculum, which I think merits a blog of its own, as it's one of my very favourite plants

hispanica): a plant that has been muscling its way into our gardens and woodlands. Bluebells are protected and it is illegal to dig them up from the wild although there are various nurseries who grow them for sale. They are best planted around this time

I do love the garden in October - especially in the sunshine. In the early Spring it is all about hope and waiting: all that mulch and neatly tidied brown border. A month or so later and there is green stuff and bulbs all over the place. Then we