F is for flower borders

Now that the mornings are becoming cooler with a fine mist there’s no harm in looking back to the glories of summer. The flower borders at West Dean Gardens are a glorious blaze of colour during the summer months and the cutting gardens provide an almost endless supply of flowers for the House. Maintaining the … Continue reading →

Summer fireworks – hardy annuals

Any group of plants that combines a cheerful, floriferous disposition with ease of culture should be hugely popular. But somehow annuals are still associated with those vast, formal bedding schemes, so popular with our Victorian forebears and whose dying embers linger on in the truncated tradition of “bedding out” in public parks. Unsurprisingly this has … Continue reading →

Garden styles

My first “proper” gardening job was on Haringey Council in North London and the supervisor of the park that I worked in was a retired Regimental Sergeant Major who used to parade his staff each morning before battle/work commenced and issue the orders of the day. His approach to horticulture was equally regimented and all … Continue reading →