My spring garden highlights

There are a couple of highlights in my garden at the moment. One is Tulip Prinses Irene. You have to try it next year if you haven't already. Despite its beauty, the bulbs are widely available. The colours of the flowers are the thing: a kind of dusky orange tipped with golden yellow, each petal subtly feathered with deeper shades of muted crimson. Was there ever a tulip as beautiful or as regal as Prinses Irene?

Actually there is a tulip as beautiful, possibly twice as beautiful, because you get twice as much bling for your buck: Orange Princess, a sport of Prinses Irene, with fuller, fatter flowers. I'd settle for either.

The other plant is an extraordinary but easy-to-grow annual that self-seeds like crazy from year to year. Trust me, you can never have enough of it. The flowers are as complex as its name: Cerinthe major Purpurascens.

Mediterranean native that has become deeply fashionable in gardening circles over the last several years, Cerinthe has hooded, complex flowers in shades of dusky purple and deep ink, held on upright stems. With glaucous green foliage that forms sturdy clumps, Cerinthe looks both spectacular and sinister, and is a great addition to gardens that have open days - it's a real talking point.

I wouldn't be without it, and neither should you. You can sow seed direct now: make sure the soil is free-draining and in a sunny spot.

This spring I've got serious about decent supports in the veg patch

For several years I've had two black double arches that loom large, especially when they're not clad in beans or courgettes. They're sturdy, made of tubular steel and more than do the job but I've never really liked them. However I couldn't find anything preferable.

Most garden arches tend to be thoroughly utliitarian in black metal or dark green plastic, or else fussy beyond belief, all frills and furbelows. I don't want either, and this year I've found just the ticket.

I've invested in simple double arches of galvanised box steel that are their natural shade - an unobtrusive pale grey - but can also be painted at a later date, if I fancy. I know they'll look good through frost, snow and rain without visually hogging the scenery. I bought them from McKellars Ironwork (mckellarsironwork.co.uk) and am happy to recommend them.

My other support system purchase are hazel bean poles. Not a great cause for excitement, but they look so much better than the usual garden canes. Sweet pea supports are never quite tall enough, but these are around 7ft tall so by the time they're pushed into the ground to form a wigwam, they're 6ft and counting.

I've also used them to make slim, tall wigwams for growing cucumbers. Not bad for a bunch of 20 for £19.55 - though carriage is an exorbitant £18.35. I bought them from naturalfencing.com.

The ornate beauty of the Alhambra Palace, Granada

I recently visited the Alhambra Palace, Granada, a place I had wanted to see for some years. And yes, I was knocked out by the beautiful designs and rich colours of the tiles.

Some were exquisitely ornate - others exquisitely simple, such as the diamond motif set on a white background, each corner marked with a star.

Why don't we see more of these gloriously rich shades - ochres, cobalts, jades, plums - and wonderful patterns in tile manufacturer's designs?

The highlight for me, though, were the spectacular Judas trees, in full blossom (pictured below). I planted one in my own garden last year and although it is still a scrap, the Judas trees at the Alhambra have given me great hope for the future.

Garden designers love the dark-leaved Cercis, canadensis Forest Pansy, but my heart belongs to the Cercis siliquastrum, the ancient, classic Judas tree of Bible lands, with thatwonderful habit of sporting blossom directly on its branches and trunk.

You can also see it in full fling at this time of year at Beth Chatto's gravel garden. It's an easy tree to grow and ideal for London gardens.

Spring gardening?

Spring is such a great time of year - especially when the weather is as glorious as it was until a few days ago. The daffodils in parks, pots and gardens were in overdrive, the tulips were starting to flower and the summer roses looked like they would be blooming soon.

At Chez Barron there is much to be done: new metal arches blocking the driveway that need to be pushed into the ground in the back garden, a plant stand yet-to-be-assembled on the terrace, a zillion seeds from broad beans to zinnnias to be sown. 

Oh and the seven-foot hazel poles, on order for the sweet peas, are arriving any day now. Dahlia tubers buried in compost are producing leafy shoots in the greenhouse, castor oil seeds bought over from Crete are sprouting and the chitted potatoes are more than ready for planting. The big question is, can I keep up with the plants???

Battening down the hatches for winter

I've gathered in the last spoils of spring and summer sowing before battening down the hatches, in the kitchen garden anyway - and herein lies the dilemma. Vegetables are meant to be eaten, I know, but when they are so pretty, who can bear to? 

Take the pure white, shiny pattypans, that feel so nice in the hand and look like flying saucers with scalloped edges. They're meant to be eaten when a few inches in diameter, but like courgettes, they like to hide beneath their large leaves, so that some aren't discovered until they're a good deal larger. 

Steamed until tender, slathered with butter, they're quite delicious. But I prefer them gathered into a group on the sideboard, and interspersed with night lights. If they don't rot and have to be thrown out beforehand, I may use them as a Christmas table centrepiece, scattered with a little silver glitter dust.

Then there are the chilli peppers. Oh so many of them. Scotch Bonnets, Cheyennes, Cayennes, Apaches, Gusto Purple, all of which I grew to supply various shades of heat to guacamole, chilli con carne, casseroles...

Scotch Bonnet is supposed to be blisteringly hot but I'll never know, because I won't be using them in the cooking pot, but threading them onto cotton and hanging them on the dresser. So after growing all those chilli pepper plants in the greenhouse, it's back to a tube of chilli paste in the kitchen. 

Ridiculous, really, but having bought ready-strung garlands of peppers in Amalfi and bought them back in a suitcase, I know how lovely they look - not just for Christmas, but all year round. And I can always use them dried.

And then, of course, there are the pumpkins. What's the point of growing them if you don't get to eat them? What indeed. But I just can't bring myself to consign the beautiful turks' turbans to the cooking pot - or roasting tin.  Apparently they taste a little like turnip, a little like squash.

But again, I'm not likely to find out, because it's impossible to cut them up and cook them when they look so decorative, all in a line down the dining table. It makes sitting down and eating a meal rather difficult, because to tell the truth, they're rather in the way, but you can't have everything.

In January I will be working out my list of vegetable seeds for the coming year. I intend to be brutal, and grow no vegetable that I'm not prepared to eat. 

Christmas in Chelsea

Next Wednesday 16 November, 6pm-8pm, The Chelsea Gardener will be holding a Christmas shopping evening, offering a 20 per cent discount on all purchases. There will be exclusively made garlands, wreaths and centrepieces, unique tree decorations, gardeners' gift sets as well as freshly-cut firs for sale, which The Chelsea Gardener can deliver, install and dismantle. Canapes and drinks will be served; entrance is free.

This weather is bananas

Talking of which, you should see my banana plants. As far as they're concerned, they're having a second summer, and spreading out their huge propellor leaves in the sun; they get larger by the day. The Convolvulus sabatius is going crackers; confined to a small pot, it never produced as many flowers as this in summer.

When I went on holiday at the start of September, I had mentally confined the pelargoniums on the wall to the compost bin, because I knew the cat carer would never water them, and I'd return to find near-dead plants. In fact I did, and hadn't bothered to resurrect them.

However last Friday, when the weather perked up, so did they - after a trim back, water and feed. Now they are flowering their heads off (pictured, above): how long will they carry on like this?

For the first year ever, the winter-flowering pansies and autumn chrysanthemums are blooming alongside cannas, pelargoniums and petunias (above). So there's a veritable melee of seasonal mellow fruitfulness going on alongside the decidedly non-seasonal Mediterranean blooms.

As I write, the pumpkins are drying out in the sun (right) at the same time as the strawberries are flowering and fruiting all over again. Confused? You bet they are, and they're not the only ones.

Usually, at this time of year I'm ruthlessly ripping out the summer bedding and settling in the winter charges; out with the old, in with the new, not least because I'm keen to try new container combos.

Exceptionally, I've decided to make hay while the sun shines, even if that disrupts the colour scheme (summer had lots of blues and lilacs; autumn's scheme is all rusts and burgundies) and plant what autumn bedding I have alongside the old. The result is bold, bright and I feel I have the best of all seasons. Long may it last - even if it's just for a few more weeks.


There are dilemmas, though. I can't plant some of my spring-flowering bulbs till I've freed up the containers to plant them in, so I've dug up the cascades of blue lobelia in one pot and added them to another, so I can plant a bowlful of hyacinths, at least. Which is how orange winter-flowering pansies peek out alongside the blue lobelia, looking pretty if a bit incongruous. In these uncertain days of global warming, we gardeners have to be adaptable.

Showy begonias and dahlias are a joy in the late summer garden

The spoils of a late summer garden are many - provided you're not too fussy about flowers, ie a touch haughty-cultural. If you think begonias are vulgar, as some gardeners do, you're missing out.

What they lack in subtlety - and goodness knows, nobody could call them elegant or dainty - they make up for in showy, spectacular Las Vegas glamour. Huge flowers the size of my fist in the brightest of shades: the rich velvety scarlet layered blooms, like a dancer's skirt, seem to shimmer in the sun. It seems amazing that such abundance came from one small corm.

The other begonia that has been starring on my terrace is an unknown variety, because I rescued three scrappy plants from the remnants bin at the garden centre, and potted them up together. The result: cascading day-glo pink bellflowers that just keep on going, looking like outsize fuchsia flowers (below). They fall well, too, making blobs of colour on the ground that don't seem to fade.

I've yet to be won round by lemon begonias, but feel the same way about lemon dahlias, too. That hasn't stopped me growing dahlias in every other shade, notably the shocking pinks with marvellous chocolate foliage such as Excentrique and the wonderfully near-black cactus dahlia, Chat Noir (below).

Dahlias are tremendous value for money: bury the tuber, stand well back, and gasp at the display which starts when other summer flowers are peaking, and continues well into autumn. Like begonias, they've been sneered at by the cognoscenti for years, outlawed to the suburbs and local horticultural shows, until revived in recent years by the late Christopher Lloyd at Great Dixter and Sarah Raven.
 
I must admit that new Dahlia Tahoma Moonshot (above) doesn't quite live up to her name: those lemon and cerise petals are special, but the flowers are dainty and gosh, even subtle - and that's one thing neither begonias or dahlias should ever be.

Show-stopping lilies

The jury's out...on which white lily has the most beautiful bloom. Is it flamboyant Muscadet, with its amazing 9ins wingspan and gorgeous, pink-speckled fluted petals, or pure, perfect white Casablanca, totally white and softly dimpled?

Possibly Muscadet wins by a pink speckle, but that could have changed if I'd grown pink-throated waxy white Lilium regale…..and come to think of it, Lilium longiflorum, the florists' white lily, which is just as easy to grow, is equally captivating.

(Above) The flamboyant Muscadet lily and (right) the perfect white Casablanca lily

African Queen dazzled us last month with her huge, rich apricot trumpet flowers - more the colour of a day lily - that fade down to a shade of warm sand. Just one flower in a water glass looks glorious.

Nerone, a Sarah Raven purchase in her signature deep claret Venetian shade, didn't disappoint either, and all those glossy flowers with swept-back petals, like giant tigerlilies, are so sumptuous that even though they've faded now, I can't bear to remove them.

(Above) Dazzling African Queen and (right) the Nerone has a deep claret shade

Now it's the turn of the beautiful bridal whites. All of them smell sensational. And the delicate, rose pink and white species lily, speciosum rubrum, with those wonderful curved-back petals, just creeps over the back of the sun lounger - grow lilies in pots and you can give them pole position - so anybody can lie there and become intoxicated by that heavenly perfume. They look like a beautiful Japanese painting.

(Above) The delicate, rose pink and white speciosum rubrum lily

Despite all the colour and clamour of the containers on my terrace, provided by dark sultry dahlias, jet-black petunias, yellow tomatoes and other delights, when the lilies are out, they steal the whole show. I can never quite believe that they can look so magnificent yet be such a doodle to grow. All you do is throw three or five bulbs into a potful of compost in spring - or the previous autumn if you're really organised - and put them away, out of the spotlight, and forget about them.

A mulch of grit helps keep out the slugs and snails and keeps the pots looking neat. The leafy stems start to poke out of the compost early in summer, and keep growing - not always at the same rate, but you can't have everything. From that point you have to keep an eye out for the red lily beetle which loves nothing more than to chomp out the flower buds, so vigilance is key, but it certainly pays off.

Amazingly, after having put in such a fantastic performance, the bulbs will do exactly the same thing the following year. I can't think of any other plants that will give such spectacular results for so little work on the gardener's behalf.

My Chelsea Flower Show highlights

Peeking at the Chelsea show gardens before the public gets to see them is one of the perks of my job. There are no crowds to spoil the view and the atmosphere, despite being a mere 24 hours before the Show begins, is comparatively serene, probably because everybody is half dead from fatigue.
 
I'm convinced half of the designers don't go home the night before but just settle down in a corner of their garden; so much easier for the 5am start the following morning, when the photographers arrive.

Bunny Guinness (above) could just sleep under one of the giant cloches in her over-scaled kitchen garden, which was one of my favourite show gardens: I loved the outdoor fireplace with glass-floored living room above (pictured below). When I asked her which vegetables she thought were the most decorative for us townies to grow in our borders, she replied they all are: and she's right. And reassuring to know that she actually lives the dream, and spends happy hours when she's not designing other people's gardens, in her own kitchen garden.

Using recycling and reclaimed materials featured large at Chelsea: the knack is making old materials look knockout rather than knackered. Nigel Dunnett pulled it off beautifully with his RBC New Wild Garden (below), with an old shipping container given fresh life as a garden studio. Painting it a soft blue, adding a green roof and attaching sculptural discs to the front wall that were actually insect habitats turned it into veritable eye candy.

I want one, but where to find a shipping container? The wonderful low, curved drystone walls he featured were topped with no-maintenance houseleeks and in-filled, he told me, with any old reclaimed objects, including books from the local Oxfam shop; these also had hidey-holes for insects.

B&Q's version of an insect hotel (below) was decidedly more luxurious: a high-rise wall with habitats created by youth groups and schools for insects, bees, birds and bats, though none were visible at the Show.

 
The high-rise tower block of growing edibles - like windowboxes stacked one on top of the other - was a brilliant concept from the designers Laurie Chetwood and Patrick Collins, who won a Gold medal for the garden, but I wasn't sure how the giant glass and perspex dining table, with goldfish swimming around in a tank beneath, fitted in (below). I guess it's just spectacle, which is what Chelsea is all about.

 
Talking of spectacle, Diarmuid Gavin's giant pink pod (below), hoiked up high above the crowds with a crane, presented the ultimate in visuals: nobody could top that. But despite the inevitable comments deriding him for making a completely unrealistic garden, Diarmuid won a Gold, so he had the last laugh. And if you view the pink pod up close, it is amazing, and beautifully planted.

But what really worked for me, and others who bothered to take a closer look, was the ground-level planting: clipped 'clouds' of box and yew with multi-stemmed trees and grasses … in its quiet, exquisite way, the lush green planting, which would translate well into an urban front garden, was the real star of the Irish Sky Garden.

But the one garden which many of us confessed we'd most like to loll about in was the Monaco garden (below), oozing Riviera glamour and style. Perhaps we can't grow carob and citrus trees outdoors, and maybe we don't have the space - or climate - for an outdoor lap pool, but we can dream, can't we? And I must admit that plonking a field of lavender on a garden rooftop beats sedums hands down.

The trend for looser, more naturalistic planting has sunk into our psyches by now, and everywhere, on all the gardens, the planting schemes were soft and subtle, with key colours of maroon, pinks and bronzes, best shown on the Laurent-Perrier garden.

The Cancer Research UK Garden (below) showed some great native drought plants, including Spanish broom Sparteum junceum and viper's bugloss.

If I could pull a key plant from several different schemes, though, it would be the burnt-brown iris Kent Pride, which put in its first showcase appearance on the Evening Standard's town garden, designed by Dan Pearson, back in 1990, proving, I guess, that truly great plants never date.