One canal boat, seven friends, six bell towers and several bottles of gin!

Zack Snipes

This hellebore always astonishes me with its profligacy, an almost overabundance of buds and, in due course, flowers. I have to remember not to trim its marbled leaves, a feature of x ericsmithii hellebores; this one is H ‘Piroueutte’ and I can visualise it twirling round and around with its swirling pink skirts, like a whirling dervish.

AS SHE OFTEN DOES, naturalist and nature writer Nancy Lawson—perhaps known better to some of you as the Humane Gardener after the title of her first book—caught my attention the other day.

In 2024, design is taking a turn away from pastels and towards the boldness of jewel tones.

Planting ginger is easy, but you have to do it properly and at the right time if you want to get a decent crop.

Aloe has many benefits — it's a natural remedy for sunburn, promotes skin health, and aids in wound healing. Use it for hair care, acne treatment, and as a makeup remover. But that's not all, it's for improving digestion, soothing minor burns, and repelling insects. You can create homemade lip balms and hand sanitizers with its gel, too. With potential health advantages like blood pressure regulation and immune system boosting, aloe is a versatile plant. Read more below!

This year, when gardeners look at plant and seed catalogs, I think they will be inclined to go for the safe and familiar. After all,  even optimists need a sense of security. It will probably be a banner year for roses of all kinds, with reds selling well. The ongoing vogue for cottage flowers will probably continue to be strong. In fact, the wildest thing many people will invest in come spring will be a few of the more bizarre coleus cultivars.

Tender climbing perennial plants which are free flowering and suitable for growing in pots in the greenhouse, or for planting out of doors. They are closely related to the Snapdragon (Antirrhinum), to whose family, Scrophulariaceae, they belong.

If there is a lesson to be learned about the rose above, ‘Phyllis Bide’, it is not to overlook what is in front of your face. Planted outside the front door a few years ago to replace, on a whim, the bright pink ‘Pink Perpetue’, the bud that this bloom opened from must have been in evidence before I noticed the fully open flower on Thursday, but I hadn’t seen it. Not that I was expecting to see any roses in bloom halfway through January, although it does sometimes happen – and admittedly it tells me that this is a rose I had forgotten to prune when I did my climbers back in the late autumn! The front of the house is in full sun for most of the morning, so the sunshine that accompanied some bitterly cold days this last week has clearly given Phyllis a boost. Overall, however, she has still been outperformed by her predecessor, and needs to pull her socks up to justify her front-of-house position.

How to Grow and Care for Ironweed (Vernonia) Vernonia spp.

Some people get their kicks from designer labels, others from rummaging through flea shops, or collecting obscure Japanese comics, vintage tractors, handbags, dolls, beer-mats, Star Wars merchandise or whatever else. Me, I get mine from ordering seeds.

GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN