Malvern flowers

No... it's no good. I know we're a gnat's breath from plunging into the all-embracing tsunami of Chelsea, but I couldn't quite leave this year's Malvern Spring Gardening Show behind without paying homage to the beautiful, charming, extraordinary plants in the Floral Marquee.

Here, to feast your eyes on, are the true stars of the show.

Arisaema serratum var. mayebarae (Edrom Nurseries)

Primula fassettii (Kevock Garden Plants)

Geum 'McClure's Magic' (Proudplants)

Heuchera 'Southern Comfort'

Lilium 'Dimension' (Harts Nursery)

Ornithogalum saundersiae (Warmenhoven)

Paeonia peregrina (Tale Valley Nursery)

Tritelia ixioides 'Starlight' (Avon Bulbs)

Rheum palmatum 'Ace of Hearts' (Hardy's Cottage Garden Plants)

Iris 'Jewel Baby' (Broadleigh Nurseries)

September flowers

Now how's this for dedication? I've just been scuttling around my garden in the pouring rain to take these pictures since it's Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day and though the garden is very weedy at the moment it is full of flowers, so I didn't want to miss it.

As so often happens when you do things differently, it was a revelation. I've realised I never go out in the garden in the rain: just look what I've been missing.

Did everyone else know this already and wasn't telling me? From now on I hope I shall always pop out with an umbrella to enjoy my garden with dewdrops of rain on every petal.

Thank you to Carol at May Dreams Gardens for hosting Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day!

September flowers

Things are beginning to go over a little, but the roses are making a spectacular late-summer show and as always, I'm surprised how much there is to see.

Thanks once more to May Dreams for organising Garden Bloggers Bloom Day!

July flowers

I decided to join in with the Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day this month - this is the first time I've ever created a slide show, so be gentle with me!

You can see everyone else's spectacularly gorgeous gardens at May Dreams - go check them out, it's a real celebration of summer.

Plant of the month - April

Amelanchier canadensis

Snowy mespilus

Actually this picture was taken a couple of weeks ago, and the blossom has finished since, but for all that its spectacular display is brief, when snowy mespilus flowers in spring it really steals the show.

These delicate, butterfly flowers are far more graceful than cherries: they're less overblown, less in-your-face, far more comfortable in their own beautiful skin. These are not flowers that need to shout their arrival: they just appear one day, and everyone drops what they're doing to stare.

One of the most lovely things about the snowy mespilus blossom is that it appears against the very young growth of the leaves, which at this time of year is tinged a coppery bronze. The combination will take your breath away. This is in many ways the perfect small garden tree: it will now clothe itself with vibrant pale green leaves all summer, provide striking purplish-black berries in autumn, and shed its leaves with a final flourish of vivid orangey-reds. It never gets too big, or too messy-looking, and it's not too fussy about its soil - it even puts up with my free-draining sand. If you don't have a mespilus in your garden, go out and buy one right away: you're missing something very special.

Plant of the month - January

Helleborus x hybridus


This lovely pure flower is a real sign that spring is on the way in my garden. I have a few - this white one, which occasionally sports flecks of burgundy at the base of the petals; one deepest purple, though that isn't quite out yet, and some rather dirty pinks which I'm probably going to rogue out at some stage. But I can't grow snowdrops in my soil (though I'm going to try Galanthus elwesii soon in the hope that it'll live up to its publicity and grow in poor dry soils - unlike most snowdrops) - so Hellebores are my substitute. I love the fact that you have to get right in there to see the flowers, modestly nodding amid deeply-cut leaves but hiding the most exquisite form and shape. And the leaves provide an evergreen ground cover the rest of the year. I clip the old leaves down to the ground every autumn to give a fresh flush over winter, and then I can look forward to the flowers in all their beauty when nothing else is out yet. Glorious.