Search - Articles

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

major disaster has come to light. Due to a mix up in the bulb warehouse, a batch of tulips that should have been pure white Tulipa 'Purissima' turned out to be unidentified huge-flowered red things, which do not agree at all with the neighbouring pink

.Nectaroscordum grows from a bulb, and is part of the allium (or onion) family. In fact it used to be called Allium bulgaricum until the nomenclaturists stepped in a few years ago. While I'm always smitten by the spherical flowers of most alliums (for example the tennis

-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

March is not really prime garden visiting time: a few gardens with specialist collections are open for the wonderful National Gardens Scheme, but most of them are keeping their powder dry in readiness for spring and summer.However, gardeners still

closes, if you look closely then spring is visible everywhere. We have buds fattening as quickly as a troupe of bun-loving chubbies and the pointy shoots of bulbs push themselves through the cold soil. These are stark reminders that soon things will need

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

.Stachyurus praecox - deciduous shrub that grows to about 3m high. The hanging, greenish flowers in early spring (before the leaves appear) are very pretty. Leaves good in autumn as well.Magnolia denudata - one of the finest magnolias which flowers a couple of weeks