One of the great advantages of gardening in Britain is the opportunity to grow an enormous range of plants. For this we owe a great debt to the plant hunters, who have furbished our gardens with treasures gathered, often under considerable duress, from around the world.
May is a busy month in the gardeners' calendar. Here in Sussex, a rather cool north westerly is blowing even though the skies are blue. However spring is well and truly here.
There are around 100 varieties of apples and 45 of pears in the orchards in the Walled Garden at West Dean many grown espalier-style around the walls. Read more in our West Dean Gardens blog.
I'm a great believer in "an Englishman's home is his castle" so I have no desire to proscribe gardening style. Equally I look to nature for inspiration and guidance in how I garden and the first comment in relation to the regimental approach above is that nature doesn't "do" bare soil.
West Dean Gardens is joining the Royal Horticultural Society in celebrating National Gardening Week (13 - 19 April). Launched four years ago by the RHS it has grown into the UK's biggest celebration of gardening.
The fruit collection at West Dean Gardens features over 100 varieties of apple and 45 varieties of pears, many of them trained into exquisite traditional shapes. There is, however, more to an apple than a quick bite.
Have you taken a leaf out of West Dean's book and your garden is tickety-boo? Plants firmly pruned, spare pots washed and stacked? Paths swept and seeds sown in a timely manner?
Yes folks, it's official, Spring has sprung! How do we know this? Not because we have passed some arbitrary date such as the 1st of March but because we are gardeners and are attuned to all those subtle, sensory signals that silently but insistently say "Winter is past, the sap is rising, it's all before you, a new growing year awaits.
Yorkshire rhubarb, from the hallowed rhubarb triangle around Wakefield has been awarded the coveted protected designation of origin (PDO) status by the European Commission, prohibiting anyone growing it outside the region from calling it the same. It gives it similar status to Cornish clotted cream and Melton Mowbray's pork pie.
Did you see the naturalised bulbs in action at West Dean during February this year? If you missed the display poor you as it was a sight to gladden any heart.