Gardenig in city London. Tips & Guides

Elizabeth Lawson is a naturalist and writer from Ithaca, NY, with a doctorate in botany. She’s also the new president of the American Primrose Society.The name Primula translates as “little first one,” and they are a welcome sight of spring. She introduced me to the best primulas for our gardens today, and some primrose legend and lore. Plus: Enter to win the

Collaborative post

Plants have as much power as a piece of art, beautiful fabric, or favourite antique to make a room sing, but decorating with them requires just as much consideration as anything else. We chatted with an interior designer, landscape architect, floral designer, and well-known tastemaker about design strategies to implement when bringing plants into the home. Plus, our experts have shared a few favourite houseplants to help you get started—as well as their top sources for impeccable faux options if you’re wary of the added responsibility.

A former AIB banker-turned-gardener says he feels “like a five-year-old getting presents” after winning a major award as well as a prestigious gold medal at the Chelsea Flower Show in London.

Show me the gardener who isn’t seduced by the sight and smell of a climbing rose in full and heady June bloom. And why not? It’s a particularly seductive mixture of perfume and colour that’s always guaranteed to pull at the heartstrings, reminding us of the beauty of the summer garden as well as its fleeting nature.

Where can you find the most spectacular bunch of tulips, cheerful dahlia stems, or jaw dropping array of fragrant roses? The city offers an unparalleled selection of flower markets to get your floral fix. From the historic Columbia Road, where horticultural gems line the much-loved East London street, to the vibrant and colourful Sunday flower fare on offer at West London favourite Chiswick Flower Market, we’ve curated the best spots in the city to flock to for your next dazzling bouquet.

I never knew that the antonym of autumnal was vernal. Which makes sense, I guess as there is no word for springnal. With covid, I think many of us are embracing gardening more than we even have. Most garden centers and nurseries are reporting record sales (have you tried to order bulbs or garlic lately? Most everywhere is sold out!). So while the entire planet continues to deal with the nasty effects of Covid 19, I suppose we could say that for gardening – there’s been a bit of a silver lining.

As we all know there is no «Winter» term at school but I have a 16 year old Japanese ward, Sky, who is at boarding school nearby and whose reports I read. So these have inspired me to decide that the garden and gardener need a report after three plus years (though I haven't had a report for about 40 years). Winter is a hard time to judge a garden but a good one. For me it should still have structure, texture, colour and, yes, scent.

Do you ever look out at your garden from indoors and wish the views from the windows were nicer, rather than only noticing how it looks when you are out there in the middle of it?

On Being a Botanical Pedant Over New Year I went to the Stanley Spencer exhibition ‘Heaven in a Hell of a War’ at Somerset House and found it extraordinarily beautiful despite the depictions of  both the brutality and banality of war.  I would recommend that anyone who is in London makes the time to visit it – it’s on until January 26th and admission is free.  But – here is where the pedantry comes in – as a gardener I always make a point of examining the botanical content of paintings very closely – there’s many a Madonna that gets overlooked as I focus on the detail of the flowery mead at her feet, and portraits of noblemen and women take second place to the views of their gardens that form the background.  In the Stanley Spencer exhibition there were two wrongly identified plants  – a  beautiful vibrant portrait of Papaver orientale was labelled as Papaver rhoeas. P.rhoeas is the field poppy, symbol of fallen soldiers, while the oriental poppy is a blowsy, gorgeous border flower and oddly out of place in this exhibition.

The Deptford Project’s Small Garden was about raising the profile of community based food projects in London.  It was crammed

Jo Malone London, the new garden is Blooming Marvellous Instead of spending a large fortune on a garden at the Chelsea Flower Show, Jo Malone Ltd has funded the restoration of the now beautiful Old English Garden in Battersea Park. The garden is a social project done in conjunction Thrive’s Growing 4 Life project that helps people with physical or mental health challenges gain recognised horticultural qualifications.

A Collision between Autumn & Spring As autumn leaves continue to drift past my window (well those that haven’t been blasted into the next county by the recent gales), the mimosa is coming into flower. As lovely as it is, it is far too early – mid-February to mid-March is its usual season – and I fear that if/when any really cold weather arrives, the flowers won’t survive.

Spring’s Gone Undercover While all remains frozen in time outdoors, the RHS Spring Show in London revealed many of the delights we have been missing.  As always I was smitten by the Lilliputian perfection of the alpines that were being exhibited. What did I buy of the many delights on offer?  In total defiance of the weather, I bought Watsonias – the white flowered corms that I last saw flowering in South Africa against a backdrop of Table Mountain!  Well, my mimosa continues to bloom despite the biting winds and a heavy fall of snow, so I might get away with it,  but I am keeping them undercover for the moment.  With the Met Office forecasting another 30 days of below average temperatures ‘undercover’ is getting increasingly crowded.

In 1971 I was in my early twenties and working for a design company in London when I picked up a copy of Time Out and saw an advert offering weekends volunteering on organic farms.  It was just what I was after, I needed to get out of the city and breathe some country air, so I rang the number. That phone call changed my life in many ways. Working Weekends

Arundel is awash with Tulips This is a particularly good year for tulips, so I took a detour on the way home from Woolbeding to visit the gardens of Arundel Castle – in particular the Collector Earl’s Garden – which, like the picturesque garden at Woolbeding, is another Bannerman creation. It is an extraordinary place with structures and planting that manage to draw the eye away from the fairy tale turreted and crenelated castle and the looming Gothic cathedral, reducing them both to backdrops to the magnificent and rather bonkers recreation of a garden that the 14th Earl of Arundel created in London with Inigo Jones.

I know, you thought you were reading an article on a gardening website, and here we are talking about some sort of new haircut?Nah, the Chelsea chop isn’t the l

I had imagined this blog was going to be about the race to flower in May – a catalogue of the first of everything suddenly appearing and the amazing wonders that have been unfolding in the garden every day and sometimes hour by hour. But the most astounding, different and wonderful thing that happened in my garden in early Summer was been the scent.

Here’s the first part of a post about a house Jim and I bought in the summer of 2005. It’s one of a (not very) regular series of posts about gardens and houses we’ve owned over the years. (Being so very historic, you’ll need to excuse the quality of these pre-digital photos – or don’t, if you’d rather not).