Island Gardening
The January Garden – Looking Both Ways
Janus Pater, firstborn of Roman deities, presides over all transitions and beginnings, the door keeper, guardian of the new year, and custodian of the calendar, from whom January takes its name. In deference to Janus I am ambivalent about January – the lengthening days tell me to look forward as spring is coming, but the
In the Winter Garden
I always dreamed of having a winter garden – delicate snowdrops and aconites in perfect drifts beneath the tracery of the bare branches of elegant Japanese acers and the ghostly stems of birches. A contrasting backdrop of glossy green Mahonia and air laden with the delicate scent of winter jasmine, Osmanthus and Daphne. The reality is a cottage garden
Celeriac
Celeriac – a variety of celery, Apium graveolens rapaceum, with a large turnip-like root, used as a vegetable. I like to grow a new vegetable each year and as I am rather partial to both celeriac and celery they were near the top of the list last year. I had attempted to grow celeriac in
‘Wife, into thy garden’
In the 16th century every good country huswife would consult her copy of Thomas Tusser’s Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandrie for advice on the work to be performed in the garden each month. So for November: If Garden require it, now trench it ye may,One trench not a yard from another go lay,Which being well filled,