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is transformed and comes alive. This is because the stems are suffused with a blush of red and the berries are truly spectacular. They are the shape of turbans and gradually transform themselves from bean green to the colour of burnished Ribena. Sadly

interesting leaves that are shaped a bit like baseball mitts. They are best planted in a warm and sunny site as the flowers only open properly on fine days; in the past week or so when temperatures have reached 10°C or so they have been flaunting themselves

When we think of irises our minds tend to wander towards May and great swathes of big, brassy flowers over sharp-sided, sword-shaped leaves. Either that or drifts of yellow flag iris on the sides of pools and streams. We tend to ignore February. Big

What a glorious week it has been (with apologies to those in other places who have had torrential rain/snow/hailstones the size of gulls eggs/unseasonal drought etc).Every morning at about 7:15 we walk around the fields - with such clear skies

will already have bought their bulbs. I may be too late to help this year but these are my top tulips. To be perfectly accurate these are some of my top tulips as there are too many to fit in here. Tulipa 'White Triumphator' - the shape and colour of angels T

) was of a Chinese juniper 1.5m tall and 3.5m wide growing in a small, overcrowded garden. Over a period of years it was dug up, pruned and replanted until it fitted into a pot. The whole process took about a quarter of a century and is far from over.The art

).This hedge was originally in a garden I built at Chelsea in 1999 and has been through a number of incarnations. At the moment I have clipped it (or rather, Simon has) in a strange swooping and rearing shape that I think goes rather well with the Stipa

with daffodils in an almost unquenchable variety of shapes and colours, almost all of them shades of yellow. Given the joys of this or this or this or (almost) any one of the 20,000 available varieties, why choose a forsythia for your spring hit of yellow?It also

perfectly suited to the smaller garden. It has pure white star-shaped (hence the name 'stellata' as in 'constellation') flowers. It grows very slowly and will reach only about 1.5m after 10 years: given perfect conditions it will eventually top out at about

and the shape of the petals, which range from the very plain to the extraordinarily ornate like Galanthus nivalis f. pleniflorus.This month is the time when the galanthophiles roam the countryside. They are recognisable by their magnifying glasses