January Garden Tips
Happy New Year to all readers. Celebrate the New Year with a feast for the birds and the bees. Leave a few unwanted or spoiled apples on the lawn for the blackbirds, they like to [...]
January Garden Tips
Pulmonaria rubra Mild: Due to the late arrival of winter there have been some unseasonal spring flowers appearing during December. Pulmonaria rubra is always early, but I’ve never seen it before Christmas, exchorda, [...]
February Garden Tips
Waterfall at Rode Hall, Cheshire Snowdrops have already made an appearance, OK early, but not ridiculously so. Last year on a cold clear day in February I went with Cheshire Gardens Trust to [...]
February Garden Tips
Feast your eyes on sheets of snowdrops: There are special open days at gardens not otherwise accessible at this time of year: Snowdrops at Rode Hall Rode Hall, Church Lane, Scholar Green, Cheshire, [...]
March Garden Tips
March 2016 - coming in like a lion March can still bite like a lion. Frost and snow is not uncommon. The photo showing the fat flower buds of a morello cherry against [...]
March Garden Tips
There is general surprise in the media about the weather, March, they say, March is the beginning of Spring! This isn’t anybody’s idea of Spring. But looking back at my photos, there have been quite [...]
March Garden Tips
Cornus mas Flowers! Colour! Scent! Even though it’s freezing cold the days are getting longer and the landscape is no longer uniformly grey and brown. There are shrubs and bulbs doing their thing: [...]
April Garden Tips
Yellow as a baby chick for Easter: Nothing celebrates the coming of spring like sunshine yellow flowers. Even dandelions have their moment, providing nourishment for winter starved bumble bees. Although it is probably best to [...]
April Garden Tips
“The force that through the green fuse drives the flower” It is hard to believe but in a matter of days, leaves will be unfurling, birds nesting, bulbs and shrubs flowering and seeds germinating. [...]
May Garden Tips
Spring is so unpredictable; rain, sun wind, hail, thunder, rainbows, some warm days - some cold nights. The sun comes out, we put out the deck chairs, the sun goes behind a cloud and the [...]
May Garden Tips
“..adorned like sweet May”: This is the time of year when foliage is at its freshest and most vivid. New grass lights the fields. In the garden unfolding leaves shine in the morning sun with [...]
May Garden Tips
Apple blossom A touch of frothy blossom to welcome in the month of May. Flowering is late here in the top half of the country, the year has been cold so far. Flowering [...]
June Garden Tips
Aquilegia 'Pink Barlow' June. lovely June. With a bit of warmth, which surely must be coming, June is the month of roses and clematis and early herbaceous such as aquilegias and geraniums plus [...]
June Garden Tips
In the pink, magenta splatter and purple haze of colour. After the dulcet tints of Spring, the flowers that herald Summer ramp up intensity in colour saturation. Lovely and reliable perennials shine out in [...]
June Garden Tips
Buzz Buzz Buzz - listen to the sounds of bees working hard while you lie on the grass and stare at the sky. Try to provide flowers for bees all year round, also have a [...]
June Garden Tips
June is the centre of the year - the pivot. After the rush of spring growth, the season tips in to a lazier mood. This May has been phenomenally warm and dry. The reservoirs are [...]
July Garden Tips
Slide into full summer: Flaming June has been and gone. Sizzling July has arrived with no sign of a break in the weather. There is a decided shortage of the wet stuff. We in north-western [...]
August Garden Tips
Now is the time to turn away from the bright colourful attention seekers of our garden - I’m talking about flowers - and to give serious consideration to the supporting chorus, without which those divas [...]
September Garden Tips
September and October are the unsung heroes of the flowering season. So many of our favourite hardy plants come into flower now, sometimes for the second time. Hydrangeas, their colours gradually changing with great subtlety, [...]
October Garden Tips
October is good month for visiting gardens open to the public for inspiration, as many border perennials will continue to flower, grasses are looking at their tawny best and trees large and small put on [...]