Gardener and Photographer with a love of Roses and a magpie-eye for all things Horticultural
There have been some changes at Mottisfont in Hampshire. A new garden has been created and there is a new-ish visitor centre. But these notes and images are more about the practicalities of growing Old Roses, with detail from winter and spring. For those wishing to delve deeper into the art and science of rose…
Continue reading ➞ Pruning, care and maintenance plan for your roses, starring Mottisfont Abbey
The beautiful collection of Old Roses at Mottisfont Abbey in Hampshire - displayed in three separate walled gardens, each with its own distinct character and altogether showcasing several hundred Old Roses varieties with a range of complimentary plants. And the fragrance! Be still my beating heart! Actually, there is a new garden there, that I…
Continue reading ➞ Pruning, care and maintenance plan for your roses, starring Mottisfont Abbey
The Gardens at David Austin Roses, Albrigton, Shropshire They may have been battered by the rains but how beautiful are these gardens still! A veritable riot of colour, in beds and borders, along paths and clothing walls and clambering up and over pillars. Every conceivable space is festooned. Walls have climbers and ramblers flowering from…
I've an 'Introduction to Pruning' workshop to present tomorrow so I'm all about secateurs and shrubs; loppers, ladders and most importantly, looking; and climbers; roses, of course; a foray fruit trees - and trees generally; a touch of soft fruit if there is time. The dead, diseased and dying, and timing. Safety, very importantly. And…
Continue reading ➞ Autumn Pruning …
I wrote this (longer) piece for the Petersham Nurseries blog (abridged) and it would be a shame not to recycle it here! "You know that we are passionate about horticulture here at Petersham Nurseries, with new plants coming in every week now and plenty of activity in the gardens and glasshouses. Here are just a…
Thank you to everyone that came to the workshop yesterday at Petersham Nurseries, where we looked rose care, planting, general maintenance and crucially pruning and I hope our time together and the notes I left with you will be useful. I enjoyed the brief tour through the Cutting Garden and Kitchen Garden though not everybody…
Continue reading ➞ Rose Care, Maintenance and Pruning
Claudio Bincoletto is at the show each day and I'm sorry that I'll miss his talk tomorrow afternoon (at 4pm now I think) - Roses and their exotic scent: preparations to preserve aroma, and the ancient secrets of rose water, rose jam and wild flower cordials, Claudio Bincoletto, Master Forager I'll also miss Peter Scott…
We're taking a very brief gander at some of the main soft fruits and the pruning techniques that will help you get the most from them. Not strawberries, not in this piece, but summer and autumn fruiting raspberries, red currants, white currants and black currants, blackberries and hybrid berries and gooseberries. Thank you to the…
A little tour around the fruit garden at RHS Wisley, where all manner of soft fruit are left either au naturel or trained into fans and cordon, tied and regimented into wires and pruned carefully for the maximum harvest and healthiest plants. I've a little reading to do but have picked out the following articles…
The Teddington Gardener 