Hamamelis for a New Year

A choice selection of Witch Hazels flowering at RHS Wisley just now - such delicate flowers seem impossibly impervious to the worst of the weather but untroubled they are. I would have found more on Battleston Hill but the weather forecast (chill but bright and sunny) gave way to a bitingly cold rain and so…

Kew Gardens – Early One Morning/Lazing on a Sunday Morning

Kew Gardens once again opens its gates at 8am for Friends of Kew, right through the Summer. I took advantage of this early opening on Sunday before heading over to Petersham Nurseries and really appreciated the cool calm and quiet - there were other folk about but few and far between (it's a big place)…

Rounding up a bright, colourful and fragrant tour of Wisley (did I mention the rain?)

A perfect stranger but just in the right place, for just enough time for me to shift around for the best angle and click! (Well, lots of clicks in a very short amount of time but I like this one the most). Framed by the flowering Cherries at the top of the Rock Garden at…

Roses aside, back to Spring where the garden is colouring up with Camellias, Iris, Daphne and Anemone … and more of course

A gallery only - well I say 'only' - there is much to delight and much that is both beautiful and welcome in the garden. More and ever more colour to lift the spirits with so much more to come - and so I caution - take a pause, enjoy the season, these moments -…

The Woodland Garden, Salvia Border & Grass Beds at Kew Gardens – cool wanderings on a warm summer day

Kirengeshoma palmata (below) Actaea rubra ssp argenta (below) and in the Salvia borders... just beginning to colour up (the show ought to go on until November) The last image is of Salvia argenta - silver-fur and quite gorgeous. The name plates for almost all the salvias in the border are lost amongst the exuberant foliage.…

If you go down to the Bluebell woods…

The bluebells are out at Wisley, littering the woodland floor with cyan blue - I was thinking just how much it would cost - in time and money - for us gardeners to recreate the scene when Nature seems to manage quite happily by herself. So much of the gardens at Wisley are tended and…

If you go down to the woods today, you’re sure of many more suprises – Rhododendrons, Battleston Hill, RHS Wisley

A quick scoot around the meandering paths that wind round the slopes of Battleston Hill in the RHS gardens at Wisley. I had a glimpse of what I might find in the Wild Garden, another part of the gardens there, when I visited earlier in the week and had less than an hour to explore…

If you go down to the woods today, you’re sure of a big surprise – top marks for RHS Wisley

In the Wild Garden - woodland glades at RHS Wisley in Surrey- meandering paths betwixt the Rock Garden, the Alpine Meadow and Seven Acres. Plenty to delight with bluebells, rhododendrons, camellias, tree paeonies, Chinese dogwoods, Ekianthus campanulatus, Fritillaria Imperialis, Bergenias, Dipelta, Acers, the Judas Tree - Cercis siliquastrum and probably every colour in the rainbow.…

After winter, intimations of Spring… Kew Gardens

and finally, the shop - orchid mania due to the extravaganza going on in the Princess of Wales Conservatory