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scheme has been running for 80 years and provides the opportunity for nosey (ie all) gardeners to poke around private gardens large and small.A garden that I designed, opens for the first time this year and, as a result, I've been scuttling around

Many years ago when I was a landscaper in London, I had a regular client who had a tiny garden in Wandsworth. It was literally one flower bed, a small shed and a wall topped by a chain link fence.The reason we had to keep returning was because

At the extravaganza that was BBC Gardeners' World Live last week, my friend Joe Swift gave a couple of jolly talks about shade-loving plants. During which, I was asked up to the stage several times to help out.We discussed a vast variety of great

of the plant). They are not really the right choice for a small garden or a tidy gardener. Pachymorphs form a clump (although the clump will, obviously increase in time) which makes them perfect as big specimen plants in lawns or as part of a mixed border

that need doing, before those little green shoots in the border suddenly crack on and need attention. It is amazing how forgiving a garden can be: if you dig foundations and make a mess now, the grass will recover and the plants will bounce back by summer

made gardens at all three major shows last year) and Paul Hervey-Brookes (for Bradstone). Paul won last year's Chris Beardshaw Scholarship at the Malvern Spring Show.I am judging small gardens on Monday and will be trundling across your television

first moved here we found a clump of snowdrops just on the edge of the garden, by the woods. Over the years we have split and moved them, so that all of the wilder parts of the garden have little clumps showing their heads.However, I have absolutely

) 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

in the country. Those of you up north may have to wait until May: still, at least there will be something gorgeous to distract from the election.The most common magnolias are probably either Magnolia stellata or M. soulangeana. M. stellata is a small variety

Christmas is lurking just around the corner, like a well-oiled middle manager holding a sprig of mistletoe at an office party. So, this is my last blog for Gardeners' World before we are all swept away on a breaking wave of tinselled overindulgence