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This week is the Malvern Spring Show and the first big Royal Horticultural Society flower show of the year. This is always a fun show not least because the setting is so remarkably beautiful. As you approach the show ground from the pretty town

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

to inject a note of optimism the second picture, below, is of the same area in May - so all is not lost).Now is the time start the big chop back in readiness for the spring. Over the next few weeks I will be cutting back pretty much everything, pruning roses

and there are flurries of snow whipping off the roofs, and a rather disgruntled chicken is scuffling about like a well-wrapped babushka haggling in a street market in Minsk.Gardeners are obsessed with weather. It’s often too dry, too wet, too cold, too hot, not snowy

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

February is a blessedly short month. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you this, but 28 days of cold wet yukkiness is hardly conducive to horticultural excitement. However, we have to get through it in order to edge our way closer to spring, so

: I was told it by Kim Hurst from the Cottage Herbery at the Malvern Spring Show last year (the 2009 show, by the way, runs from 7-10 May; I hope to see you there) . Those of you sensible enough not to let mint run loose in your flower beds will have

Not a lot of gardening has gone on across the nation since we last met. We still have about six inches of snow and I am thankful I have three pairs of my warmest socks, otherwise things might be getting a bit cheesy round here.There is not much

. Their fundraising target for 2010 is £3m.You don't have to wait for the summer to start visiting gardens. At this time of year there are marvellous snowdrop and early-spring flower collections to visit. This coming weekend you could visit gardens from Wiltshire

In the words of Benny Hill: "I'll never know how a rose can smell so sweet and pure, And hold its head up high when it's standing in manure!".Old Benny cannot have been much of a gardener (a statement borne out by the fact that he lived all his life