Snapshot of a front garden – glorious lilies just at the moment

Watering in the front garden yesterday evening and everything has put on so much growth. The new Wisteria - and I must put up some wires - is rampant as is the Cotinus. Hebe Marjorie was cut back hard in the Spring and has forgiven me with much new growth from the old wood. The…

Cottage Gardens

Phyllis Bide – the perfect rambling rose for a cottage garden – informal flowers in a muddle of apricot and cream – and not a monster either, like Kiftsgate or Wedding Day… The Story cover photo is from the Welcome to Yorkshire Garden at RHS Chelsea this year. Proof if it were needed of the…

Petersham Open Garden 2018 – all the pictures!

Ten gardens, ten private passions, ten stories - all on show for Petersham Open Gardens, an event every two years where private gardens showcase their beauty and skills (and skulls in some gardens), for charitable purposes. And given the footfall today, the charity-benefitting coffers will be full to overflowing. Congratulations folk, one and all. I…

RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2018 – the show gardens, the great pavillion, the roses and … well, pretty much everything

From my walk through Chelsea, to the very last moment - a few hours in the company of the world's greatest flower show....

More from Petersham House Open Gardens …

A play with the camera first thing this morning, before the crowds, with a few at the end of the day, with the longer shadows. A cycle in along the river this morning and again on the way home, quite delightful. Hundreds of visitors for the gardens, four hundred? five hundred?, enjoying the double borders…

A few hours at Kew Gardens – the newly re-opened Temperate House, Alliums on the Broadwalk, treetop walkway, the Hive, gorgeous Wisteria, a Rhododendron or three, and laburnum arches, waterlilies, the Davies Alpine House and Rock Garden, peonies galore, many remarkable trees, a Japanese landscape and the Pagoda … and much more-

If a picture is worth a thousand words, here's a million. Kew Gardens today. Amazing, as ever -

Petersham House Gardens National Garden Scheme Open Day

A little bit of repetition in these images, but I am dithering about editing them and can't decide exactly which I prefer, so you're getting pretty much them all! A beautiful sunshiny spring morning, after a night of stormy electric rain, and everything after the warmth of the last week - and the weeks of…

In the Garden Shop & Cutting Garden at Petersham Nurseries …

Tender, tropical houseplants inside the Garden Shop and elsewhere, early perennials, bulbs, flowering shrubs and spring colour. A few, random, images from Petersham Nurseries last week. We've had glorious sunshine (well, yesterday at least), so expecting the Cutting Garden to be even more verdant, more colourful and probably about a foot taller too. We're about…

Camellias, mostly – a beautifully colourful tour through the woodland landscapes at RHS Wisley

Such a beautifully sunny, warm and fragrant afternoon at RHS Wisley. Crowds upon crowds filling the car parks but amongst the meandering paths of Battleston Hill, just a few folk pottering through the woodland paths, admiring the camellias. An amazingly colourful display pretty much at their peak, or just a little over, filling the wooded…