Search - Articles

A lot of plants are, like stragglers from a hen night, not very good at remaining upright without some support. (Although they are much less likely to wear unnecessarily short skirts or disgrace themselves in shop doorways).I'm very lucky to live

flurry of blackbirds that descend upon the plants and quickly strip them of berries (not the best photograph but they are very jumpy).I get a bit fernickety over supporting wires for climbers. I like them to be as tight as guitar strings, so I always use

nigra, with black stems, and P. aureosulcata f. aureocaulis. I have used them as screens, specimens in pots and in innumerable planting schemes. However, they are mere minnows compared to some of the Asian varieties that grow to 20m high with stems (or

served on leaves.It is a whopper of a plant reaching about 20m high (about 70 feet for those of you who think imperially) and is probably an unwise choice for a small wall.There are others which are equally spectacular. I particularly like P. henryana

and have been fascinated by it ever since. It is not a friendly plant - in fact it is quite hostile when you get in close. The stubbly leaves can reach a diameter of about six feet and are supported by thick, thorny stems. The flowers are odd

to remember to do and deadhead about 75% and leave some of the hips, thereby getting the best of both worlds. These are quite big shrubs, which grow to approximately 1.5m height and spread; the foliage is glossy (slightly bronzed when young) and the plants

wrote a number of important garden books in the 1930s. The photography is not brilliant, but what struck me is that nothing much changes, they're still much the same plants grown in much the same way.Except that perhaps our slug-catching techniques have

-forgiving whiteness has gone and left behind it … well, a lot of soggy, mucky chaos. Hedges are staggering slightly after supporting all that weight and my flower borders look about as attractive as roadside ditches. I tend to leave my herbaceous plants standing

to make a list. Things I need to do before spring: (i) A huge pile of manure has just arrived and I need to get that shovelled onto the borders. (ii) I have to get supports into the borders before things start growing - luckily we live in some woodland so

, let alone a tree - I know of herbaceous plants that achieve that height in a season. It's difficult to choose a tree that is guaranteed not to get any bigger than the height of a short giraffe, but here is a small selection that roughly fits the bill