Monthly Archives: October 2015

The British Museum are putting on a three day Mexican Days of the Dead Festival from 30th October until the 2nd November. There will be music, art and story telling. There will also be a huge painted  selfie wall where … Continue reading →

Late flowering, reasonably winter hardy and gorgeous: Salvia involucrata ‘Boutin’.

‘To set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, For summer has o’er-brimmed their clammy cells’. Ode to Autumn.  John Keats. John Keats must have been talking about a … Continue reading →

A Paint brush. A not quite hardy cyclamen. The first of the Nerines at last. The incomparable, spidery, Nerine undulata.

In a childhood favourite book of mine, ‘Anne of Green Gables’ by L.M.Montgomery, Anne declared: ‘I am so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers’. I have to agree with her, October is a magical month. We … Continue reading →

This year has been a fabulous one for fruit. Branches have been almost breaking under the weight of enormous crops of plums, greengages, apples and pears.   The young quince tree, Cydinia oblonga ‘Vranja’ produced 5 quinces; last year there … Continue reading →

Sorry if you are still pretending that it’s summer, but this is my first snowdrop of the season. It took me by surprise too.

Today, I  thought I would create a vase using silver foliage and  just the pretty, late flowering pinks,   Dianthus rupicola which comes from Sicily. Unfortunately, I am unable to use restraint whether  in a vase or in the garden. There … Continue reading →