Newsletter
The exam was OK - I'm pretty sure I've passed it. Thankfully, I finally mastered the names of the biological controls for vine weevil yesterday and, lo and behold, it came up as a major question. Someone is smiling on me. So now, time to focus
Newsletter
I'm all revised out. As the famous cartoon goes, ' Miss, my brain is full!' So, with an overnight low of -3.6C and a rapidly thawing frost outside, I put down the text books in favour of the camera. Papaver atlanticum's hairy leaves holding
Newsletter
I had my first post-GOTY radio interview today on BBC Radio Northampton, with Johnnie Amos on his Green Welly Show. He was a competitor himself on the programme two years ago so it was great to chat with him and share experiences. It seemed to be over very quickly, but
Newsletter
Winter sun has been in short supply this year. Yesterday was an exception and I sneaked off for a few minutes with the camera, leaving Roy, my Mercedes saviour, to breathe life into the near dead car on his own. (Unbelievably, after two years in pieces and three days careful
Newsletter
It seems ages since my last post here, but I do have a good excuse. I've been at the new nursery 2 or 3 days a week transforming weed-riddled, pot-bound plants like these: to clean, repotted ones like these: I've worked my way through about 1,
Newsletter
Our garden was mercifully unscathed by Thursday's storm, but less than a mile away several huge beech trees came down, one right next to a bungalow which now looks like a doll's house compared with the vast tree-corpse which lies next to it. At the nursery
Newsletter
Three of my four best winter scented plants are in full flower now. If the wind would only die down a down a bit, they would be softly filling the garden with their perfume. As it is, any scent they are giving off is being blown across to the east
Newsletter
What a gardener needs on a chilly, damp and sunless day is a little moment of joy and today there were plenty. A song thrush sang all day from a nearby treetop, my witch hazel, Hamamellis mollis, is finally unfurling its reluctant buds and I potted up about 40 tiny,
Newsletter
...when it's midwinter, raining and gloomy outside. But I've applied for a back-to-back show garden space at Tatton for 2007 and need to get my planting plan in next week. Now if only I'd started thinking about this last summer I could have worked
Newsletter
With GOTY over, life is back to normal - for the moment. The first gardening session of the new year always feels good, even if it's just an hour. It has been incredibly mild so far this winter - we have had no proper frosts at all yet.
Newsletter
I kept a blog diary before and during the filming of GOTY 2006. So if you're interested in the 'behind the scenes' story, here it is.... Read my GOTY 2006 Blog... I've still got a few more pictures to upload but Blogger seems a
Newsletter
Well, if you saw the programme you'll know by now that I won... I found out for the first time tonight how we'd all done in the individual elements, and understood for the first time just how close it had been. So here are my immediate