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Think of a vegetable that sums up Christmas. Easy - except that to make things a bit more difficult I am withdrawing the noble sprout from the equation. So that leaves the humble spud and the noble parsnip, and, as far as I am concerned, the latter

It's easy to be sniffy about the ornamental cabbage. It is quite a strange concept; an odd, Frankensteinish amalgam of vegetable and bedding plant. However, my mind was changed - temporarily at least - during a recent trip to New York. I saw

The world of gardening overflows with obsessions, such as giant vegetables, lawns, compost, cacti and many others.One of the most extreme gardening obsessions is the art of bonsai. I was always a bit dismissive of this particular obsession until I

We probably all know a Rose, Heather or Hazel, and I have friends with children named Sorrel and Daisy, but do you know a Zucchini?I knew the silly season was in full flow when a list of the UK’s Top 10 Vegetable Surnames landed in my intray

I've had a great few years growing an extraordinary range of vegetable crops for my series 'Veg With Pippa' in Gardeners' World Magazine. The results of my vegetable trials have often been fascinating, and on more than one occasion I've been

While the large flower shows are pretty mind-blowing, it's the local flower shows that get me excited about growing plants and vegetables. Many towns and villages have horticultural societies or gardening clubs, which hold at least one flower show a

Growing to eat is one of the greatest of gardening pleasures. It sort of fulfills a fundamental need. Even better is growing vegetables with children. Recently I've been volunteering at my children's school, helping to teach youngsters how to grow

My elder son Archie made his first vegetable garden this year, in the back garden of a slightly scummy, student infested house in deepest Peckham. It was a very enterprising community effort by all of his housemates, involving sporadic (though manic

the dahlia was persona non grata in our gardens and was banished to the vegetable garden, where it was grown purely as a cut flower or for competitions. Dahlias were they garden equivalent of battery hens. Now they range happily through our borders bringing

. This means that one minute I'm talking to someone from Cornwall, the next minute to someone from Scotland - gardeners from all over the country.There is so much to see and do. I've been talking about growing vegetables on the 'Taste of Greenacre' stage