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the disappointing summer crop and anticipate the pleasures of autumn – a great time for garden visits and choosing new trees and shrubs.Some of the leaves are showing the first signs of autumn colour, with golden yellow developing in tree canopies. I’m looking

my photograph of the display as a reminder that, come this autumn, I need to buy yet another huge sack of daffodils. Maybe we don't all have the space they do at Wisley, but naturalised bulbs like this look stunning beneath smaller trees - even shrubs

shrubs. It's wonderful being able to see what people have grown just down the road from me. And, while I know I'll never grow a cauliflower the likes of which I've seen in our local village summer show, it does make me less inclined to give up trying

weather? Well, For the first time in many years, I've heeded the advice to 'knock snow off branches of favourite trees and shrubs'. It's well worth doing this, especially if the snow is piled on and starting to thaw, because when partially melted snow

.Now, with the increasingly warm weather, the aphids are happily multiplying on just about any fresh, soft growth that they can find. In a bid to thwart them I’ve tried the trick of hanging bird feeders on shrubs. The blue tits form an orderly queue for the feeder (they

stride and fill my lungs with fresh air.One of the great things about visiting arboreta is seeing plants that would never fit into an average domestic garden. Winkworth has a magnificent collection of more than 1,000 mature trees and shrubs, including

-pack containing six gorgeous, well-formed, compact, vigorous, perfect-looking shrubs, for planting in winter containers. It includes hollies, euonymus, variegated pieris, Choisya ternata, which look great in that sort of planting. But my point is, six fantastic

mouths had opened we realised that no, it was not a delightful and uncommon shrub that we had never seen before, but simply one liberally decorated with 'cuckoo spit'. The frothy white liquid looked like super-delicate flowers - a reminder that even

and persistent winds.On Monday a full-sized water butt broke free from one of the greenhouses, spilled what water it contained and then right down the hill and ended up by the front door; trees and shrubs have literally had their leaves torn from the stems; less

an hour or so outdoors at this time of year, I get a clear sense of seasonal progress, and whether plant growth is early or late. This time, though, there were conflicting signals. Trees and shrubs bore plumper buds than I would have expected in late