Hydrangeas (09 NOV 2011)

Last winter I took cuttings from plants in my mother's garden, the ones that I had grown up with. Some of them were in my subscious from as far back as I can remember being alive. They were transplanted in pots in my garden and fared so well through the winter that I was abnormally cocky, wondering why people bothered buying plants when it was easy to propogate cuttings. Then we experienced an

Woodland (06 JUL 2011)

At the bottom of my garden is what I call "the woodland". It's not really ... but if you crouch down low amongst the bushes and think shady thoughts, you might think you were in a wood, I suppose.
The shade is offered primarily by my only tree, the cherry blossom. A couple of months ago, while the rest of the garden was so parched that there were fissures in the soil, this area remained slightly

Cuttings (13 MAR 2011)

Wouldn't it be ideal if you could cut off a little toe, wrap it up warm in a blanket, then watch it grow into a babe in arms who looked just like you ? - actually,  maybe not .....Here are cuttings of pieris, bay, magnolia , weigela,  tree peony, azalea, rhododendron & lace-cap hydrangea which I planted at the beginning of winter. The fact that they are all crammed into two plant pots or stuck in

Plant Reproduction (21 JAN 2011)

My mother used to be a gardener, not in a prolific or overtly passionate way though. Her garden flourished gradually year by year. In fact, till my late teens, I was under the impression that she approached gardening as an extension of housework. Then one day I pruned her rhododendron bush because it kept getting tangled in the drying laundry. When I saw her almost in tears, too upset to scold,