My garden is the nearest I get to paradise.  It is my sanctuary. Years ago I went – I don’t know when – to see Painting Paradise, the Art of the Garden at the Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, with plant and garden paintings gathered by the royals over the centuries.   I loved the manuscripts of Islamic gardens with octagonal ponds and chenar (plane) trees, lovers and flowers (their deep symbolism barely mentioned in explanatory notes).  Ditto Rembrandt’s painting of Christ as a gardener, complete with trowel.   Ditto some medieval gardens. Then royal and aristocratic grandeur. ...

No Chelsea Flower Show this year – the cloud of Covid still hangs over us. But the 2019 RHS Plant of the year was Sedum takimense Atlantis, and I bought two, and this summer Atlantis in its pot has been glorious, white and pale green shoots topped by flurries of tiny gold flowers.  In sun for only half the day, it has flowered for weeks and been a consolation for everything.  This photo I am sorry to say was taken towards the end of its glory.  The other Atlantis, in the front of a border, has not been happy.  I moved it to a pot. Now, to propagate Atlantis.  The happy fact of sedums is that...

Illness is the travel of the poor, they say, and I meanly agreed.  I thought how people like Mary Hillier, my daily, lovingly discussed the symptom of illnesses, like places visited on holiday. Corona virus, or Covid 19. We’re still in the middle of Corona lockdown, and I told Geordie (15, in Edinburgh) to keep a diary of this weird time, then thought, I’d better make a note myself, since I have actually – I presume – had it. Symptoms are so varied – you can have it without knowing, you can have it badly, and you can have it lightly. Me? No tests, I haven’t officially had it. Most...

April and the tulips in the pots and scattered over the garden make the place look on fire.  Apeldoorn Elite particularly is a star, with the three essential Apeldoorn signatures, soft orange red petals, a black star at the base of the tulip bowl, and reappearing year after year. In the time of 17th century tulip mania, when Dutch bulbs exchanged hands for thousands of guilders, the most coveted were ones with flames streaking up the petal sides.  In fact this was caused by a virus, so no wonder these prized wonders did not last that long!  I craved some.  Today, the same streaks have been bred...

Life, the Universe and Gardening explores the reasons why we garden.  When we garden we use all our senses, sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste, and our intuition too.  We find and create new patterns and new colours.  We meet animals varying from insects to singing birds, mice and hedgehogs, as well as foxes and grey squirrels, and we learn to understand and love – or tolerate at the least – them all.  We see mathematical patterns in flower shapes and leaves, we learn that every living thing emerges and has its span of glory.  We meet death as well as life.  We join nature to...