White Gardens inevitably give a sense of peace and calm. Quite the reverse for my latest article for Hort Week on Hot Borders ! The emphasis being on hot colours of orange, red, purple, deeper pinks, and yellow flowers, with contrasting foliage colours, with the added contrast of textures coming…

Are all children fascinated by the idea of carnivorous plants?  I know I was.  For me it was sundews, those sprung traps that a fly moving on them three times in a second or two caused them to snap shut on them and immure them.  For my husband it was…

Rachel de Thame has agreed to become an Ambassador for the Hardy Plant Society. She will join our team of high-profile gardening ambassadors Matthew Biggs, Matthew Wilson and Carol Klein. Rachel will work with The Chair of the HPS to promote the society and give her support to our work.…

This month, how the spring/early summer weather has affected my garden.  Following on from the very wet mild winter we had a wet mild March and April which caused Magnolias to flower in March, and Rhododendrons to be in full flower in mid-April.  It was still wet in May –…

The Hardy Plant Society uses our Bursary fund to enable applicants to conduct research and investigation into suitable plant projects.  We have three new reports for your enjoyment on our bursary reports page. Most have beautiful photos and great detail on the locations visited and plants encountered. These reports are…

This month following on from my thinking about how long plants live last month I am going to talk more about how to rejuvenate plants in your garden.   First a couple of star plants at the end of June here: – Lychnis coronaria: – Geranium ‘Patricia’: – I mentioned rejuvenating…

Astrantia major commonly known as (Great Masterwort) has to be one of the most admired plants in the Lakeside garden, it catches the eye and is the focus of encapsulating undivided attention on every garden tour I undertake. I was struck by this perennial during my days as an Undergardener for…

Let’s start with a star plant for the beginning of June in my garden – which also happens to be a very long-lived hardy perennial – the Oriental Poppy, (Papaver orientale):- This month I am going to consider the life span of different plants, and how long I expect different…

Val Bourne has been a member of the Hardy Plant Society for over 50 years and has been outstanding in her support of the society and its work. We are delighted that she accepted the role of Vice President of The Hardy Plant Society. Our President, Roy Lancaster and Chair,…

At the 2024 RHS Chelsea flower show, a new award of RHS Children’s Choice was judged by primary school children from nine London schools. 72 children visited eight show gardens to assess each one on three criteria: The junior judges were chosen for their passion for growing plants in garden…

  I recall in the early 1980s when I started my professional horticultural career as a nurseryman, admiring the Welsh Poppies from the glasshouses, colonising the grass areas that surrounded the acres of glasshouse on the east side of the Arreton Valley on the Isle Of Wight. With no mow…

After the landscaping and creating the gabion wall described last month, this month is about constructing and planting up the fern bed.  By 21 July 2019, the ground at the base of the gabions had reverted to weedy grass and had to be weeded and levelled.  You can see below…

Following our appearance at the Garden Press Event in February, the online news site Sixty Plus Surfers has written a short piece describing the HPS with a nice photo of our Chair Pamela at the event. You can see their piece on their website here: https://www.sixtyplusurfers.co.uk/homes-and-gardens/  …

Published in December last year, the RHS Plant Review Handbook 2024 contains a list of 43 groups offering ways to get involved in plants and gardening. The HPS has a double page feature showing our special interest groups alongside the main society.  If you have a particular plant interest then…

The number of entries for the 2023 competition was unfortunately fairly low. The big difference with other years is that this time, people have clearly been thinking a lot more about composition and lighting which resulted in some more unusual pictures which is always great fun to judge. Before I…

This being a gardening column you would naturally expect me to major on all the ferns I have collected into my new fern bed, and I will be introducing some of the plants in between my explanation of how we created the fern bed planting opportunity on our new bit…

For HPS members our latest newsletter has now been delivered by post and also available online at the newsletter page. Inside, you can find out about our new approach to flower shows and events around the country, why Rebecca Hilgenhof has a passion for passionflowers, this year’s new names for…

The Hybrid Hellebores are currently a real showpiece on the edges of the woodland setting at the Lakeside garden. Companion planting includes Cyclamen coum and Crocus tommasinianus. The colour tones of Hybrid Hellebores are quite something to behold, rich burgundy, plum, deep black-purple, greenish tints, pink/white flowers, deep apple greens,…

This month I shall describe how we started to plan how we wanted to landscape and plant up our new piece of garden. For this March article, I shall also thread through some photos of my favourite Cyclamen-flowered Narcissus which are a joy during the month. We are all familiar…

The Hardy Plant Society uses our Bursary fund to enable applicants to conduct research and investigation into suitable plant projects.  We have three new reports for your enjoyment on our bursary reports page. Most have beautiful photos and great detail on the locations visited and plants encountered. These reports are…

On February 20th the HPS had a stand at the Garden Press Event. Saul Walker and Helen Brown who run the Shows and Events team, supported by Ann Franks (Publicity) and Pamela Clark (Chair) all represented the society on the stand. Oliver Rogers of the World Radio Gardening site interviewed…

The Galanthus Special Interest Group (SIG) will be hosting a Zoom talk by Jimi Blake of Hunting Brook Gardens on Thursday 29th of February.  Jimi says: I live in a woodland garden in the Wicklow hills in Ireland so woodland plants have become my passion. A few years ago my…

Continuing my look at inspirational gravel gardens and their learning points for us, I mentioned last time that Derek Jarman had been in correspondence with Beth Chatto regarding suitable plants for his garden and that the BIG learning point (presumably for him as well as me) is her mantra “right…

Happy New Year!   Last month I mentioned another type of garden we wish to develop on our chalk hillside – a gravel garden.  (You may recall I already have a gravel garden I’ve described to you before, which is a gravel mulch on beds, rather than what looks like plants growing…