Creating winter beauty and interest has been a long-term gardening goal for me. I’d heard about the winter garden at Bressingham for years before I treated myself to a birthday trip there last February. The mass plantings of flame coloured cornus Midwinter Fire, and the drifts of snowdrops that spangled the woodland floor are what most stay in my mind. The hellebores were magnificent, too, and conifers stood out in the bare landscape, but most of the ones I remember were lofty trees with sideways slumping cones that reminded me of Dr Seuss. Cornus Midwinter Fire and heather balls at Bres ..read more

Wisteria is a love/hate plant – somehow easiest to love when you catch sight of its graceful flowers on a drive through the country, past places you rarely or never see. A glimpse of wisteria’s pale purple tresses arrayed down the front of a house is breathtaking. But if you are the minder of the creature that is wisteria, you’ll know how hard-won that grace is. This is a vigorous, jungle-ready climber, and the slim, year-old plant I put into the ground in 2004 is now thick as a python at its base, with ambitions to cover not just the south-facing wall of our cottage, but our entire village h ..read more

It’s January again in our part of Scotland, but the suspended, withered state of the garden doesn’t bother me as much this year, for some reason. Maybe because, unlike the state of the world, I know the garden will get through this dark, cold time, without fail. This morning there is a scouring wind that’s shaking the absurdly tall stalks of last year’s delphiniums and the strappy brown leaves of the dead crocosmia, which are, I think, the only debris that really irritates me. I hate crocosmia out of all proportion: its invasive rhizomes, its cocky orange flowers. Maybe I’ve just gone off ..read more

This is my bedroom window, with a 10-year-old clematis Polish Spirit (which I cut to the ground in early spring), morning glory “Grandpa Otts” and an oregano in the background, which you can’t make out too well but which thrills the bees. The clematis started out as a 9 cm plant from an offer in the Guardian newspaper; now it reliably grows to 8 foot high and 10 foot wide every year, provided I keep it watered. You might be able to make out the ladder in the upper corner, which is part of the scaffolding that’s now littered our garden for weeks as we get our old window frames repainted. Hardw ..read more

I’m writing not one but two children’s books at the moment, which is why I haven’t been blogging here much, but the good news is one of the books is completely and utterly garden focused: think SECRET GARDEN, but written for kids today. I was lucky enough to get an excellent literary agent last December, and since then I’ve been head-down working on revisions. The garden is a continuous source of inspiration, especially since it’s 13 years old now and getting quite mature. Of all corners of the garden, this shady area with the maidenhair ferns and the wall fountain is the one that mo ..read more

I almost didn’t bother taking this photograph. The cluster of iris reticulata outside my back door was a miracle the day it first bloomed, but almost immediately I began taking it for granted, rushing past on my way to something more important. Today I noticed it’s faded utterly, and the chionodoxa are out instead. Spring goes fast — it’s right there in the name, I guess. Take photos while ye may! This photo shows the iris with the Siberian dogwood Cornus alba ‘Sibirica.’ Not just the colour, but the texture of its stems with those corky spots, is intriguing to me. What’s out in your garden ..read more

  It didn’t take much prompting to convince my husband to come with me to England when I said I couldn’t wait any longer to see rose gardens on my must-visit list. The gardens include Mottisfont Abbey in Hampshire,  Hidcote Gardens in Gloucestershire (both of which are run by the National Trust) and Abbey House Gardens in Wiltshire. He Google-mapped our route to the nearest centimetre, found us great places to stay, and waited in the parking lots while I visited the properties. Wait, WHAT? Yep, that’s right. It took me some convincing, but he assured me he’d be far happier with his ..read more

People tend to think you’re kind of crazy if you count the plants in your garden, which is why I stopped at 157. That’s 157 different kinds of plants, not the number of things out there that have roots, or different varieties of the same kind of plant. From herbs to fruit bushes to bulbs, annuals and evergreens, this tiny patch has stuffed itself with more types of plant than I would ever have thought possible for such a modest space. I was trying to estimate its size today, and I reckon it is 20m x 10m, with two additional strips of 11m x 5m each. But even now, as osmanthus, daphne and fancy ..read more

  In 2007 I started collecting pictures of garden water features I’d like to have, but the reality at retail level was disappointing. Unless I wanted a leprechaun spitting into a pot of gold, shops both online and off-line were destined to be a dead-end for me. After much thinking, searching and persuading of my husband to organize an electrician and an outside power point, I have assembled this (admittedly blurry) slate coloured fountainhead in the shape of a lizard, pouring into a stone-effect slate coloured trough which is in fact fiberglass. In the foreground is a hellebore. The foun ..read more

There is no better month in the calendar than May. In my garden the lilacs, dusky parrot tulips, early alliums and herbaceous peonies all cavort with the aquilegias I never got around to weeding out (and I’m glad I didn’t). In this episode of the podcast I’m sitting back and marveling at what this month does in the garden. All of the things I love best, including lilacs, rhododendrons and wonderful wisteria are at their fragrant, flowering peak. Most of the tones in the garden are purples, with the occasional shot of Barbie pink from a herbaceous peony I’ve never managed to identify. If you’d ..read more