All gardeners are driven by the weather the year round but in December, in this garden at least, it dictates every detail of what we do. There is a high chance that it will be snowy, or icy, or very wet, or very windy or all of the above on the same day.  On top of that the gardening days are absurdly short.  Areas that are sun filled from April to October get no light at all and it is dark by 4.30. My garden in December is not a fun place. If it is not ankle deep in a particularly sloshy brand of mud it is frozen solid or, very occasionally, bowed under by a dollop of snow.This loo ..read more

I am writing this on the last day of October and the garden outside is barely autumnal. Most of the leaves are still green and clinging to the trees and hedges and although it has been wet all month, October has been mild.  But experience shows that, even with climate change altering the seasons, there is no room for complacency.  The clocks have gone back and winter is coming and preparation for any kind of extreme weather is sound practice. So we gradually put the garden to bed. Tender plants are protected, leafy perennials cut back, furniture brought in ready for repair and repai ..read more

October this year is entering through the back door. There is barely a hint of autumn other than the shortening days and cooler nights. The garden remains a strange matt green without a hint of the delicacy and fading that usually characterises the end of September.  But the only rule is that there are no rules. The longer I garden the less assumptions I make. And none of this harms the garden in any way. In simple botanical terms autumn colour is created by the difference between day and night temperatures in late summer and early autumn - and this year these have been remarkably consta ..read more

For us, here on the very west of England, September has traditionally been one of the drier months but also one of the gentlest and most beautiful. This is just as well because August '23 was as cold, wet and grey as July had been.  All in all it has been a miserable summer.  However it is fascinating to see what has thrived despite the conditions. Figs and tomatoes, raspberries and blueberries have been very good. Sunflowers - which hated last summers heat and drought - have been lovely yet tithonias , the Mexican sunflower whose brilliant orange flowers are usually such a feature ..read more

Whereas a year ago we came to August on the back of the hottest, driest weather the UK had ever known, this July was cold and wet. So it goes. Weather is one thing and climate another and the latter is steadily getting warmer and bringing erratic weather in its wake. Whereas this gardener wore unseasonably heavy clothing and wellingtons in the July mud, the garden loved the rain and tolerated the cold so looks much fresher this August than a year ago. Often August can feel as though summer is growing weary and jaded but not this year. However the one thing that is always constant in the Augus ..read more

Last summer July was baking hot here in the garden with the temperature rising above 40 degrees for the first recorded time. It was certainly the hottest and driest I recall in the UK since the famous baking summer of 1976. But the garden came through. Some things performed less well than usual but nothing died and the value of having plenty of organic matter in the soil and a thick mulch over any bare soil was clearly proved. Regardless of the weather, July is the summation of summer, the month when the days are still long, the growth as full as it ever might be and none of the slight wearin ..read more

March was blessedly soggy. Not so good for gardeners but after the exceptional dryness of last year, great for gardens. Moisture in the soil now, as plants start to grow in earnest, means that the garden is greening daily and the spring flowers - especially the blossom and bulbs - are quickly following in this green wake. April weather is, of course, notoriously fickle - and becoming more so as the pattern of climate change becomes more apparent. A few years ago we had 20 days of frost in the month and the previous year - the spring of 2020 when the world was locked down in the grip of the Co ..read more

After a very dry February March begins cold and squally and looks set to be chilly for most of the month. But any gardener learns very quickly to expect the unexpected in March.  The only certainty is change. March is likely to have bright sun, gales, rain, hail, snow, ice and often all on the same day. It is as though the weather is trying its hand, seeing what it can do before settling into Spring. Certainly you should not be seduced by a bright warm day into planting out anything remotely tender. But, whatever the weather, Spring is here. The garden is filled with snowdrops, crocus, d ..read more

January has been either very wet or very cold - and as a result the garden has been surrounded continually by either a lake of water, with the flooding coming well into the garden, or sheets of ice. In itself this is not so unusual for winter weather, but the trend has been for our winters to gradually become warmer so this has been a climatic blip. In any event it means that we go into February with the garden still grey and almost without visible life, a full ten days or so behind where it might be in terms of snowdrops, hazel catkins, first irises, aconites, crocus and the shoots of daffod ..read more

2023 has opened wet and mild for us here in this garden on the borders of England and Wales although we had a snap of really cold weather just before Christmas with the temperature dropping to minus 13 (8F) for a few days. This, followed by days of rain, has left the garden ragged and strewn with limp foliage. Hopefully, despite the above-ground carnage, not too much has actually been killed. But Spring will reveal the extent of the damage. However, whereas up until Christmas Spring  is another land whose shores we can dream of but not see, from January, on a clear day Spring is  ..read more