I do love a foliage wreath on our front door, and as a result I've accumulated an enormous stash of decorative bits over the years saved 'just in case for later', to include: a straw ring; tons of cones; various baubles; ribbons; and other bits and bobs. They've threatened to jump out of the basket on the top shelf of my study for quite a while now, so it was high time I did something with them instead. The result now adorns our front door to welcome us home; it's all from my saved bits, plus a crochet sleeve added to the straw ring for protection and for easier decoration. I'm quite pleased ..read more

It's the final day of this year's National Tree Week today and I want to celebrate the tree which stopped me in my tracks recently. At other times this has been a very big week for me, having organised and helped to plant thousands of trees in south Wales as part of an Earthwatch project in the 1990s. Those days feel like they're part of another life, but it's good to be reminded how important trees still are to me, simply by just being there.  The pictured tree is towards the end of my walk into town and I must have walked past it hundreds of times, but for once I saw it properly for t ..read more

I repotted the house chilli - now in its fourth year - recently. There were chillis to harvest and straggly growth to cut back first, and now it's back on the windowsill it struck me it looks a little like bonsai... without the need for daily attention. I think the self watering pot is the key to my plant's longevity in the face of the scant attention I give it. As you can see, there's plenty of promise of more chillis to come. This is just as well as I'm planning to learn more about fermented foods in the new year and it looks like chillis will feature a lot in my future. After that, I expe ..read more

We had a lovely time at Avebury Manor's sculpture exhibition on Saturday and my friend W kindly sent me this jolly photo from the day afterwards. When I saw it I giggled at how my chosen outfit picked out the colours of the Orangutan sculpture we found dangling in one of the trees, so it just had to be added to my irregular  series, Separated at Birth today. I'm giggling again at how appropriate the series name is for this particular subject, seeing we're such a close relative to primates. It's lovely to have some humour back on the blog again - for those of you confused by my ..read more

I spent an amazing couple of days at RHS Chelsea helping Naomi with the planting tasks for her Flood Resilient garden. This is what I learned along the way... Have hi viz, will travel! Luckily I didn't need to borrow NAH's heavy duty railworking hi viz jacket and trousers (on standby in case it really poured with rain), nor did I need a hard hat as I was working after the main construction phase. I had to take an online site safety course and test before being allowed on site It's good to travel comfortably and wait until the last moment to don your heavy steel capped boots. Even better whe ..read more

This time last year I was mourning the loss of the huge box ball by our front door due to box moth ripping through the whole of Chippenham. Much to my surprise I found the pictured cyclamen, still green and alive despite 15+ years of being completely covered by the box. A silver lining to my problem! Earlier this year I created a small bed surrounding the box's stump and planted some grasses and a couple of ferns, both tough as old boots: they need to be as the ground was hard and unyielding. I've also added a couple of hellebore seedlings I found self-seeded in the gravel path in the back g ..read more

Here I am with my friend and fellow garden writer Sue on Chelsea Press Day, our fab photo kindly taken by another friend and photographer Ian Thwaites, who's given his permission for me to use it in this post. Thanks Ian!* 'Oi, stand aside,' I hear you say... 'we want to see the garden you've been telling us about for months!' Well, here it is... ...almost exactly the same view, but without us!  I'm also rather fond of this photo looking the other way, despite it being shot into the light. I think it gives it a slightly mystical feeling, especially as I mentally called the tree on t ..read more

We're back from a tour of the middle Rhine area, having travelled there by train and then making a base for ourselves at Boppard, just south of Koblenz. We had a lovely time exploring the beauty of the area, thanks to the local tourist tax of 1.50 Euros per night giving us the freedom of local buses and trains, plus free entry to the informative local museum. On our final day we headed upstream to the small town of Bacharach, a former capital of the region and full of old timber framed houses like those you can see in the above photo. It was also festival time, with the streets bedecked with ..read more

How's your veg growing this year? Here at VP Gardens, it's one of the strangest of seasons, particularly where the cucurbit family are concerned. I have no squash forming at all, and my cucumbers refuse to grow beyond an inch in size. Courgettes, on the other hand, are pumping themselves out like there's no tomorrow. How come one from the same family is prolific and the others aren't, despite all of them grown on my sunny patio? It's a mystery to me. It means I've added another quick and easy seasonal recipe to my courgette glutbuster repertoire: courgette tzatziki. It's perfect for a summer ..read more

There's been a phenomenal fruit set on my apple tree - a combination of early warmth at the right time for pollinators followed by plenty of rain means June drop hasn't really happened here this year. I thinned these recently alongside dozens more and removed a couple of others with brown rot (see next photo). I think there might be more of that to come this year, so I'll be keeping an eye out and keep my fingers crossed it doesn't take a more determined hold.  As you can see from the photo below I picked lots of fruit of a good weight and I pondered over on Insta whether I could ..read more