I have not long been in from the garden where I have been on my knees hidden amongst the grey glaucas leaves of our globe artichokes weeding. But I am completely happy – bending down in the under-layer. In the walled kitchen garden the hoe does ninety per cent of the weeding and we run it through the soil every few days in dry weather but hand weeding is the only answer for weeds growing in-between plants where you have to concentrate carefully and work with clever fingers so as not to pull out a tiny treasure. It’s completely satisfying and a vital part of caring for this garden. 

Something so simple but giving us such floral joy is the meadow running alongside our driveway, which now at the beginning of June, is bursting with buttercups, making the whole field shimmer buttery yellow. This is the meadow buttercup, Ranunculus acris. I love the thought that if I was transported back here in 1390 – the date of the house – there would have been buttercups flowering in the same meadow here. Buttercups do very well on this part of the meadow as it is damp and the buttercup is only really happy in damp soil where they are pollinated by bees who can easily get at the nectar and pollen with their open flat flowers. 

Just a reminder that we are opening the garden here on Sunday June 14th 1-5pm.  Pre-booking only – you can book tickets here.

Nothing can diminish the beauty of May. The late tulips are sumptuous, the apple blossom is at its most bountiful, the bluebells in the woodland and under our big oak tree are fully on song so too are cowslips, forget-me-nots and camassias. And above all the intensity of new leaves on all the hedges and trees is breathtaking. For a few weeks this garden is elevated by morning dew and cow parsley, apple and hawthorn blossom (such a lovely word) and the dawn chorus. The garden here is better than anything else this world has to offer.  

For me nothing celebrates the month of May more than cow cow parsley. There is nothing in this world so beautiful and it steals my heart every year. It is technically a weed but here at Columbine we encourage it as much as possible. It is fine growing as a single plant but nothing can compete with it en-masse. The soft, clouds of white sitting on tall feathery foliage multiplied a thousand times. It is an umbellifer, member of the carrot family and a brilliant thing to have as they attract a range of beneficial insects such as hoverflies and ladybirds into the garden. There is a cultivated variety Anthriscus sylvestris ‘Ravenswing’ that we grow here with purple leaves and brown stems beneath the white, lacy flowers. It cross-pollinates with wild cow parsley which means that the offspring quickly loses the intensity of purple leaves, so if its purpleness is the main attraction for you then do what we do and keep it well away from its wild cousin. I confess I don’t mind as I’m obsessed with cow parsley in all its forms. It couldn’t be more welcome here. 

Monty Don sums May up perfectly for me in his diary entry in The Ivington Diaries which was published in 2009. 

“23rd May 2003 
When I die I shall go to May. It will be green. Not environmentally correct, for things will just be, without measurement or judgement, but actually the colour green in all its thousand shining faces. Every day will feel like Christmas Eve when I was ten. Every green leaf will be perfection exactly as it is and yet will grow and change every time I turn my eyes to it. Every moment will be like the arc of a diver breaking the waters of a green lake. I know this because this is what May is like here and now. Almost unbearable really. It does not hold for half and hour. Yet in the shifting, growing hymn of light and colour and leaf is the still simple reason that I garden”.

We have hundreds of tulips breaking hourly into radiant flower and above all the garden is turning green. That wonderful April green at its most potent. There is a sense that every leaf is burgeoning and growing into the freshest and vibrant green possible. As I get older this becomes more and more precious. How I love this time of year. 

It is such a busy month in the garden especially with seed sowing. The greenhouse is currently the engine room of this garden. But we should do everything we can to reduce the amount of plastic we use. We are doing this by reusing any plastic seed trays and pots that we have – and looking after them so we can continue to use them for as long as possible and not replace them. 

I love primroses. No other plant epitomises spring more. We have them growing on our moat banks, in our woodland and on a bank near the bog garden and I am cheered by everything about them. They range from ivory-white to a egg-yolk yellow although the vast majority of them stay the lovely shade of pale yellow we all expect. Don’t be surprised if the occasional bright pink one pops up – here we always have one or two of those that appear every year. Primroses spread by seed but I do love to lift and tease some apart once they’ve finished flowering to make new plants for planting elsewhere. Wherever they’re growing this lovely little flower personifies new life. 

And while I adore the delicacy of the early spring flowers, I cannot write about April without again mentioning tulips – wonderful, joyful tulips. The first real blaze of colour of the year and every year they astonish me anew. We plant hundreds and hundreds of them and now is their time. 

I have kept a gardening diary ever since I came here in 1997. It is surprising how the record builds up day by day, like a huge jigsaw describing the relationship between me and the garden. However it’s main function is to record what comes into flower or fruit and when, the weather, any nature observations and what I sow and plant. You think you’ll remember but you don’t. Anyway to my surprise I see that on March 15th 2017 I planted the clematis montana that grows along the wall of our jetty. In nine years the clematis has not only become established to the point of swamping the wall – but has become even more established as a fixture in the garden. It feels as though it has always been there. Our bridges although only built recently are already settling into the landscape especially now that all the landscaping and turfing around the new footbridge has been done and they too feel like they have always been here.

I was walking along our moat walk the other day when suddenly I got the pungent aroma of mint. I looked down to see growing out of the wet ground wild water mint. It looks like watercress with purple under its leaves. The flowers are mauve and held up by burgundy stems and they make a pretty little posy in a jar which is now filling our kitchen with the minty fragrance of the garden.

The daffodil season in this garden is long. The first to appear are the wild daffs Narcissus pseudonarcissus in our orchard around the beginning of March followed by the first of our National Collection of Engleheart daffodils ‘Magnificence’ in our walled garden. We have hundreds of daffs from the miniature ones we grow in pots to ‘Thalia’ – a lovely white with a cream trumpet to highly scented ‘Geranium’, ‘Cheerfulness’ and ‘Winston Churchill’ and last to flower the poeticus cultivars flowering through April and into May. Delightful daffodils – you can never have too many.

As many of you will know snowdrops gets my pulse racing. I am obsessed with them and will admit I’m a complete galanthophile. Snowdrops spring up regardless of the weather and will carry on reliably reappearing year after year for generations. Each year they spread a little more by seed and I speed that process up by lifting and dividing every February. Did you know that snowdrops contain their own anti-freeze protecting the plants from frost and snow? In fact snowdrops were harvested during the First World War to make anti-freeze for tanks. I adore them and I love to pick just a small posy for indoors where the heat of the room brings out their wonderful honey fragrance. At this time of year, the sight of the first snowdrop is such a joy and fills my heart with hope and that is the spark that fires my gardening year and every day thereafter is touched with excitement. 

And talking of excitement – our new footbridge is complete. The scaffolding has been removed and apart from some landscaping and finishing touches to do – it is all finished and looking fantastic. We are also thrilled to have featured in the January 21st issue of Country Life and named as one of the top twelve gardens to visit in the country, plus we have a seven page feature on us in the March issue of The English Garden magazine – out now. We’re certainly on a roll!

The first violets start peeking from the base of our hedges here in late January but by mid-February they are resplendent. They do not leap out at you but gently invite you in. A little clump of violets is, if the ground is not too wet, something to get down on your knees for and enter into their microscopic world. 

The sweet violet Viola odorata is a woodland plant and in this garden grow and run along the base of our hornbeam and hawthorn hedges in little splatters of colour. Look closely at their individual flowers and they vary quite a bit in their shades of purple and mauve with the occasional pure white one. And like snowdrops hold a bunch of any shade to your nose and you will be transfixed with their gentle fragrance. It has been copied in sweets and soaps but nothing can compare to the scent of real violet flowers.

I love to grow food – this is my passion and I shall indulge it to the hilt. But this year I would like to grow more cut flowers. We actually grew quite a lot last year – our dahlias doing particularly well. Around early May we always have dozens of seed trays in the greenhouse filled with seedlings and more sitting outside waiting to be planted. We’re talking about making some new cut flower beds near our old orchard and filling the space with cosmos, sweet peas, zinnias, tithonias, nicotianas, poppies, molucella, marigolds and more dahlias to name but a few! I think with careful organisation, we can grow many more cut flowers this year that will flower over a much longer time – this is exciting. 
 
Work on our new footbridge carries on and progress on the oak railings being fitted is going very well. Here’s to a very happy, healthy and productive new year.

The best yellow has been from our field maples, which turned the most lovely buttery yellow just before the leaves fell. We planted a whole load all around the garden and have allowed quite a few to grow into good sized trees which being bigger makes them shine out more. Our hornbeam hedges have turned the most unexpected yellow this year, making a real difference to the amount of light in the garden. We planted them over 28 years ago and because of the hot, dry conditions this year it has intensified the sugars in the leaves and so the intensity of colour, but I know that they will turn their coffee-brown in a few weeks. 

Work on our new footbridge is progressing well. It’s a huge project. Scaffolding has been erected which quite frankly looks as if we’re building the Forth Bridge. The galvanised steel joists have been put in place – a huge and exciting operation which involved a 20 ton crane to lift the supporting steel into place. We all gathered to watch this piece of Columbine history and I’m happy to say all went smoothly and was all completed within an hour. Next stage is to fit the oak railings which are being handcrafted as I type. Exciting!

For most of the year ivy is much maligned. However, over the coming weeks it will be given some of the respect it deserves as part of our festive decorations of green indoors and wreaths hanging on our front doors. 

I like ivy and every gardener should nurture it. It provides welcome green at a time of year when nothing else is really giving any kind of display. Most importantly it provides winter cover for birds and insects. It flowers very late in the year so is one of the most important sources of nectar for insects – so be like us here at Columbine – deck your hall this Christmas with swags of ivy but also learn to love it in your garden. 

Wishing you all a very Happy Christmas. 

One day it has been violently stormy and the next clear as glass with blue skies. Soon I will dig up all the dahlias and put the tubers upside down in the greenhouse to dry off before storing them in our barn where it is dry, cool and frost free. Work on the new footbridge is progressing well – piles have been driven into the ground on both sides of the moat – welded together and going six metres deep and the concrete foundations have been poured to support the bridge. Exciting! November is the key month for planting tulips. We’ve had a delivery of just over 9,000 bulbs piled on the doorstep in seven large boxes – this is a lot of holes to be dibbed. Buying plants and bulbs by mail order is a wonderful thing. Everything, despite being paid for, arrives as a present. The quantity contains mostly tulips but also daffodils, camassias, Iris reticulata, crocus, snake’s head fritillaries and alliums. I can’t tell you how exciting it has been to choose tulips for our new walled garden. We love all the dark tulips – ‘Queen of Night’, ‘Black Hero’, ‘Black Parrot’ ‘Ronaldo’ and adore white ones such as ‘White Triumphator’, ‘Spring Green’ and ‘Maureen’. All our favourites and we grow them every year but we have increased our pinks this year with ‘Alibi’, ‘Carola’ ‘Mariette’ and ‘Pink Prince’. 

As I cut back some ivy growing up the walls in our original walled garden the other day, I came across a nest, the size of an large orange made entirely from moss and lined with feathers and hair – hair that looks very much like it belonged to our Red Poll cattle. There was no evidence of any broken shell. I am not sure what made it or who used it or even if it was used at all, but it is exquisite and I now have it in my potting shed so I can admire it every day. Whoever it was who moved on – their next nest must have been very des res indeed to have not used this wonderful mossy home. 

November is not a time to tidy up and put the garden to bed for winter. This year is a particularly good year for berries. Embrace the season and enjoy the rich leaf colours, ageing seedheads, the misty mornings, dew covered cobwebs and the lowering light in the sky.

I also wanted to thank all of you who came to my special talk at the end of September. It was an absolute triumph raising lots for St. Elizabeth Hospice. 

There are not many American words I like, but the one that I love is ‘fall’ for autumn. In every way it perfectly suits the season with its falling leaves. Now I know I have enthused about this before, but I do love leafmould. Climate change means that foliage seems to cling to the trees for longer and change colour more slowly, but a storm or hard frost can send the leaves streaming down to the ground this month and while they look lovely on a clear, crisp day, as soon as they get wet they become a sodden mess and must be gathered up. 

I regard fallen leaves as a precious harvest and we collect as many as we can to make leafmould which I use as an element in our potting compost or as a mulch (love that word) for woodland plants. 
If they are not too wet we sometimes mow over as many as possible because they decompose much faster if chopped up and then kept damp.

Leaves are mostly broken down by fungi and the process is slow. There is no need to turn it but simply store the leaves in a wire sided bay or in bin bags and by next October they will have become lovely, rich leafmould. So get collecting – it’s garden gold. 

I also love compost. Not so much the stuff itself – although I am as partial to a crumbly, sweet-smelling barrowload as the next gardener – but the idea of it. It’s the perfect embodiment of what any gardener is trying to do. We start with heaps of waste – the least valuable thing we have – which turns into the single most useful thing in any garden. It is deeply satisfying. 

The idea is to make a mixture of brown and green material – in other words – carbon rich waste such as dry herbaceous growth, straw or shredded twigs which is known as ‘browns’ and stuff that is higher in nitrogen like grass clippings, lettuce leaves and veg peelings – which are considered ‘green’. It’s not an exact science but the ideal ratio of carbon to nitrogen is 25:1 and an imbalance in this is the main reason compost fails. So judge carefully the levels of ‘brown’ and ‘green’ putting the emphasis on ‘browns’. 

It always surprises me how keen people are to grow maples from Japan but rarely choose our native maple Acer campestre. It is a wonderful tree with incredible yellow foliage at this time of year as well as making a robust hedge and being remarkably trouble free and easy to grow – which can hardly be said for Japanese maples. 

We’ve planted lots of field maples in this garden over the years and they are now really good sized beautiful trees that are wonderful for wildlife. Insects feed off their leaves, the flowers provide pollen for bees and the seeds provide a food source for birds and mammals. 

There is no denying that autumn is in full swing. So don an extra jumper and enjoy the last of the flowers and watch the swansong of the leaves as they explode into oranges and scarlets.

September moves summer gently into autumn. The destination into winter may not be where we want to go, but the journey there is always a joy. It is a month of calm tinged with loss and that gentle sadness intensifies the preciousness of the present moment. The plants in our borders that have given us such pleasure over the summer are beginning to fade away to make room for the last harrumph of flowers before we drift into glorious autumn. 

It only needs the first frost – which can come in late September to make me realise how precious it is to have flowers this month. Of this small band the salvias here at Columbine are now shining the brightest. 
I say ‘the salvias’ as though we have a large collection of them. We do not – although Hew and I did come home with five more after we attended a St. Elizabeth Hospice thank you party held at Katie’s Garden Plants near Woodbridge last week. But we do have a few different flowering types. My favourite is Salvia ‘Amistad’ – it’s a real star with unusually large, deep purple flowers with an almost-black stem. And it flowers for ages. Salvia ‘Blue Enigma’ is another goodie we have here with flowers that are a gleaming satin blue covered in velvety down. We have also added a few salvias to our new walled garden – Salvia ‘Cherry Lips’ and ‘Amethyst Lips’. 

If you want a true blue salvia, then S. patens is the best one. It has wonderful pale green leaves and the royal-blue flowers are carried in pairs. To ensure our salvias survive the winter, I dig the plants up each November, cut them back hard, pot them up and put them in the greenhouse to rest – protected from frost. We also have some growing permanently in pots, so I simply lift the whole pot and pop it in the greenhouse.