The Guardian Gardening Blog

My articles published so far on The Guardian's Gardening Blog:

Kingdom of Plants 3D - 25th May 2012
My Malvern Show - 13th May 2011
Best Autumn Gardens - 15th October 2010
Spuds you'll like (about potato days) - 20th January 2010
All is not well in the gardens of our dreams - 25th August 2009
Got a glut? Try mangetout and mint soup – 14th July 2009
How to spot the arrival of summer – 1st June 2009
Hot composting: trying out the green Johanna compost bin – 5th May 2009

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How Advertising Works in Chippenham #41

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Decide to put your house on the market Research thoroughly the best Estate Agent* to get you the swiftest sale and best price for your property Agree to have a For Sale sign placed outside (not everyone does these days) Wait for a blogger with a camera to notice that Scott really does need to use his full Christian name in his advertising Et voila ! * = Realtor if you're reading this over the Pond Gosh, I see it's nearly 5 years since the last How Advertising Works , it's great to be back! NAH and I have a list of examples similar to Scott's e.g. Sue Wellings' signature at the swimming club became S Wellings and he was at school with Terry and Steve Potts (S Potts and T Potts). Do you have any examples to add to the list? 😉
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Friday Bench: Meet Geoffrey

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  I'm rather taken with Geoffrey, a friendly giraffe used to promote Toys R Us since 1965. I'm even more taken with his bench inside W H Smith in Chippenham. Prior to the chain's sale earlier this year, it was agreed that certain stores would also have a Toys R Us section within them. Geoffrey's bench marks the transition from one of our traditional High Street retailers into something more fun and entertaining, though sadly rather empty when I took this photo. At some point the name W H Smith will morph into its new owner's chosen rebrand name, T G Jones* - rather bland in my opinion which appears to have been made up, unlike the original name which refers to the company's original founder Henry Walton Smith and reaches back to the year 1792. * = it has already in nearby Malmesbury, though they have yet to erase the etched W H Smith from the glass doors. They seem to have retained the corporate blue colour on the shopfront too, for now at least. UPDATE - it tur...
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Friday Bench: With Wallace

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The Gromit Unleashed trail in Bristol is providing a lot of free fun and laugher in Bristol this summer and it was the perfect excuse to meet up with my Girls Night Out friends recently. We started off as colleagues 26 years ago, and now are firm friends, though it's rare to find so many of us together these days. Here we are with Wallace providing a stand-in for our one missing group member. This photo makes me so happy! The trail comprises 53 various Wallaces, Gromits, Feathers McGraw and Norbots spread over a wide area in and around Bristol with a few extra surprises along the way such as the roving labybird Gromit and a few items hidden around the Museum. It's great fun and don't we look fab!
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Little green apples

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It's been an amazing spring for blossom which turned into an amazing summer of fruit, even the usual June drop did little to thin my apple crop with up to six fruit left on each fruiting spur. This combined with the hot dry weather means the trees are suffering, so it was time to give nature a helping hand this week by thinning my crop. It always feels hard to reduce this bounty but I know I and the trees will benefit in the end with larger, more juicy fruit for me to enjoy. I removed all the damaged or severely misshapen fruit, plus any extras to leave a maximum of one fruit per spur. I must have removed hundreds of apples! Some people recommend a gap of around four inches between fruits, mine are around two. When I've done this in previous years I've always wondered if I could use this earlier crop of fruit, especially as many of them are of a fairly decent size. Some light googling reveals I can, with apple mint jelly or a pectin starter for future jam making given as th...
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'Moonfire' is back!

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Regular readers know my fondness for Dahlia 'Moonfire', but not that it's been absent from my garden for the past couple of years. I'd managed to successfully overwinter it in the ground for over 20 years, but that's always a risk which eventually found me out. Oh, how I've missed her. How could I resist those firecracker blooms when they winked at me from the plant stall at Chippenham's market last week? Not I - a small exchange of cash ensued and I bore her triumphantly home. I was so pleased with my purchase I even stopped on the way to take the above photo in the Donkey Field! I've always known this dahlia as 'Moonfire', so I was surprised to see her called 'Sunshine' in some of the plant catalogues earlier this year. It turns out that this was the name given by the original breeders in the Netherlands in 1993, but a stray seedling made its way to the UK before commercial release, where it was named 'Moonfire' by Chris Sander...
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A prince amongst quince

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I'm exhibiting my first ever quince for all the world to see 💛 I've had the tree for years and I've monitored it carefully previously for any signs of flowers or fruit; then I threatened its days in my garden as numbered many times when none appeared; so of course the year when I've ignored it completely is the time when it presents me with one solitary fruit. Naturally, it is truly a prince amongst all quince. I made the discovery when harvesting the figs, which have gone bonkers this year and screened off the quince tree from the rest of the garden. Perhaps that's the secret to success? At first I had quite a time deciding whether it was ripe, but that initial lime green I saw has now morphed into a wonderful warm yellow and a fruity fuzziness that tells me it's time. Now what shall I make with it? 🤔 Your ideas are welcome... You may also like: I've just fished out the link to my recipe for poached quince , which in turn links to my recipe for quince tar...
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Postcard from Yorkshire

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We're just back from a fortnight's cottage holiday in North Yorkshire, where the weather was a bit iffy but we still found plenty of places to enjoy ourselves with new discoveries amongst those already familiar to us. It also meant we could spend time with the Yorkshire branches of our family - now plural as our niece has settled down into her new home in Leeds. It wasn't all rain, there was still lots of sunshine and we often found rainbows gracing the valleys seen from our higher viewpoints. I feel my photo sums up quite a lot of the Yorkshire we found this time: dramatic skies with rainbows and pools of sunshine; brooding stone walls; and vegetation sliding into its more Autumnal clothes. This was the roadside scene close to Stump Cross Caverns, a welcome venue on a rainy day which we explored with UV light torches. There was space and time to breathe deeply and ponder recent dramatic turns in life, then return home refreshed and ready to face what's to come.
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For Apple Day: Eat your way to the river

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  It's Apple Day, one of my favourite days of the year and what better way to celebrate than to tell you about my recent trip to Longney, where Gloucestershire Orchard Trust have 18 acres of apple orchard under their tender care. Here you'll find older orchards with some trees well over a century old, plus their newer plantings of around 94 Gloucestershire cultivars which have just acquired national plant collection status at Plant Heritage . The jury's out on the actual number as DNA testing has revealed at least one locally named variety is actually a more well known one: Ribston Pippin in this case. Don't worry, there are dozens there which definitely have their origins rooted firmly in Gloucestershire and their cultivation at Longney is vital to their continued presence and preservation. There were around 200 local varieties at one time and today it's around 100 still in existence. Steve Mason - the Trust's Curator - was our knowledgeable guide who invited ...
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That blue flower: A spring spotter's guide

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Spring is a prime time for blue flowers and my daily walks currently have several from the same plant family* lining the local footpaths. As I walked past the Donkey Field the other day, I overheard some children ask their parents** what the pictured blue flower was. It reminded me it's often mistaken for those other familial blues and this time was no different, as they said it was forget-me-not, instead of the green alkanet it actually is. As well as similar flowers, most of these plants are hairy in their nature, flower around the same time, and favour damp, shady places. Many of them are great for pollinators too, especially bees and this week's warm weather has certainly drawn them to these flowers. This makes it even more likely for these plants to be mistaken for each other and it's a great opportunity for me to put together a spotter's guide in case you find the same flowers on your outings. Staying with green alkanet, the key features which set it ...
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Postcard from Italy

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I'm just back from an amazing train trip across Europe to Lake Garda in Italy. The alpine scenery along the way was breathtaking and it was great to have a ground level view of the mountains instead of the more familiar overhead one. NAH and I managed several refreshing swims in the Lake bobbing amongst the ducks, plus trips to Verona and Venice as well as ferry trips around the lake, which is huge. So huge, even a trip on the pictured cable car up Mount Baldo (the tallest mountain on the lake at 1760 metres) wasn't enough to take it all in. My heads still there, but I'll be back soon with more garden related stuff!
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