Well, guess who came to visit? Yep, it’s Marianne. Thinking about making trouble. We had lunch, a good gossip, and then a quick garden tour. And we went to see my latest brilliant idea: What’s the point of wonky posts, I hear you ask? Hm, well, – I have begun to think about how dodgy it is walking round a garden with steep slopes and steps. We...

More is better. For the love of wanton annuals. (C) Lorene Edwards Forkner I like to turn hardy annuals loose in my garden, for the flowers of course, but just as much for the chance to observe how subsequent generations play out. It’s not often we get to watch evolution in real time. Calendula, poppies, larkspur, love-in-a-mist, and clarkia, to name...

For those of us who love to garden and love to travel, a garden tour can satisfy both passions and provide inspiration and a welcome relief from the hard work of actual gardening. View from Powis Castle In 2017, a friend and travel expert, Lorraine Whittemore, and I sat down to discuss plans for a dedicated garden trip to the UK. I had been on several...

Since the launch of “No-Mow Month” campaigns, which experts seem to agree may do more harm than good, I was happy to see a more science-based and realistic meme appear. From the plant and seed-seller American Meadows and my friend, the groundcover author Kathy Jentz, the campaign is “Reduce Your Lawn Day.”  (May 20.) Its mission is “to educate, inspire,...

There was a luxuriant stand of it in my grandparent’s garden. It fascinated me as a child and I would be hard put to say whether the tiny waxy bells or the scent – rich, fresh and sweet all at once – attracted me most. When I started my own garden, lily of the valley (Convallaria majalis) was one of the signature flowers that I had to have – along...

“If you look the right way, you can see that the whole world is a garden.” Wise words from Frances Hodgson Burnett in her much loved novel The Secret Garden. A country lane in Devon, UK Certainly spring in the countryside of Devon, in the South West of the UK, lives up to this. Narrow country lanes are flanked with exuberant vegetation. A Linear...