At this time of year I’m excited each morning to get out of bed and check seed trays for germination and emerging perennials in the garden. Gardening is such a positive addition to my life - even if it’s a single pot of tomato seeds on a windowsill, it is fun. Everyday something to look forward to.

I’m also going easy on myself this year. I’ve found that because I write about growing food, I’ll admit I feel so much pressure to grow everything imaginable. If I’m honest, that can take the fun out of what should be an enjoyable pastime. This year I’m trying to reclaim the fun even if it means I’m not growing ten million different cultivars to share in magazines and on social media.

Right now however I am concentrating on jumpstarting the allotment.

Dear deers, please vacate the allotment

First on our project list is keeping animals to their allotted areas. I love the wild roe deer and they have free reign of the meadow but growing food is challenging enough without them helping themselves before us.

I’ll admit I lost my veg buzz last year because the deer and pheasants kept setting things back significantly. Up until then, the deer weren’t much of a problem on the plot. Now deer chomp most plants and pheasants dig up potatoes. So last week our friend Graham and I began deer fencing the allotment to deter the fluffy-eared-ones.

Our two chickens are adorably cute but they are also allotment hooligans. They cause havoc in freshly sown seed beds, these higher fences will stop them too.

As for pheasants, answers on a postcard. I ended up netting lots of crops last year, which isn’t ideal because it adds an extra job and a barrier to picking crops.

Polytunnel shenanigans

Down in the polytunnel I need to talk about wrens. My first batch of lettuces were growing nicely until a clever wren figured out how to hop in above the door. Nipping the top off every seedling! I’m starting again with ‘Red Salad Bowl’, green ‘Till’ and speckled 'Flashy Butter Oak Bicolour Oakleaf’. Old compost bags have been duly stuffed into the gap - barriers are the best way of separating wildlife from crops.

Germinating in the ground of the polytunnel are pea ‘Meteor’, radish ‘French Breakfast’, turnips ‘Goldana’ and ‘Tokyo Cross’, and beetroot. My plan is to grow these fast crops undercover while we sort the deer fencing. We should have eaten these vegetables by the time the tomatoes get planted in the poly in May.

Alongside veg seedlings I’m propagating lots of tomatoes from runners and some wild primrose plugs to a larger size before they go out (shown above).

I’m also readying a veritable army of perennial flowers for our main garden to inject loads of colour into it. Last year I grew three different coloured hardier penstemon from seed and divided more geum ‘Totally Tangerine’. In recent weeks I’ve been dividing Helenium, Astrantia, Geranium and others for more free plants.

The challenge I’m finding with a bigger garden (I know, first world problems) is that there are so many plants I’m not sure where I can fit all of these yet! I’m waiting for the garden to grow a little to make sure I avoid planting on top of existing plants.

I don’t want to wait too long though, I need them in the ground while it’s still wet and raining to form deep roots for summer. I won’t need to water them in if it’s still wet.

Outdoor propagation station

Directly outside the polytunnel is the table I move seedlings to when they’re a little larger, or start here if fully hardy. The wren doesn’t care about this lot!

Lots of the above plants are cuttings, seedlings and divisions from last year left outdoors in peat free compost all winter. I know people talk a lot about nutrition of peat free compost but as you can see from all of the plants I’m sharing, everything is growing just fine. And I haven’t fed them at all yet!

The benefit of a raised table like this is it keeps vulnerable veg seedlings away from slugs and snails until the plants are larger to tolerate nibbles.

Carefree tomatoes

Tomatoes are part of my chill out plan. I only just sowed ours yesterday - on the heat mat in the background of the above photo - and this year I’m growing just three cultivars. One cherry ‘Artisan Bumblebee Mix’ (in red and yellow), one salad ‘Gardeners Delight’ and one beefsteak‘Brandy Boy’.

I plan to give tomato vines twice as much space as normal to receive more light. I suspect it will increase yield per plant - more tomatoes for even less effort.

Other annual veg I’m sowing this week are mangetout and dill. I’ll also plant out the potatoes at some point.

Perennial payoff

Another reason I’m feeling relaxed this spring is because in recent years I’ve gone crazy planting perennial crops in a number of different edible plant communities. These are coming through strongly without me having to do very much at all. Which is brilliant news.

I have a range of beds including the above low-ish growing leaf bed, a larger bulky crop bed by the shed, tonnes of fruit bush communities and a number of woodland edible areas under fruit and nut trees. I find it a fun way of growing food because of their reliability, planning them as I would any ornamental bed. More on this through the year!

Annual crops

One of my favourite beds on the allotment is the one I use for salads each year. It’s only a few metres in size and always easy to maintain - though the deer decimated it last year.

I’ve hoe-d the salad bed once and will give it a second pass next time it’s dry. Then I will sow carrots, radish, beets, Florence fennel and plant out the lettuce. I won’t sow spring onions because we have lots of perennial onions that taste similar.

I do grow annuals in the perennial beds too, a polyculture, but crop rows exist for a reason. In the annual bed I plant in rows for speed and reduced effort when it comes to weeding and harvesting. Hoeing between rows is a doddle and it’s easy to nip up a row picking leaves.

Further reading

• Aggregate gardens: don’t give up on soil yet (Financial Times) - in the paper on Saturday or access this pay walled article by going through Google News search

• Why is low maintenance a dirty term? (Gardens Illustrated) - my new column in April’s mag, out next week

• 10 best fruit and veg for less hassle and higher yields (The Guardian) - my column with tips for making your plot more efficient

Have a wonderful time in the garden this weekend!

When I was a boy I decided early on that four was my favourite number and therefore it was my lucky number. Logically I concluded that forty four was the most incredible age. Two lucky fours ‘44’, divisible by four - so much four power! That was probably around the time my dad turned forty and I would have been four years old. Perhaps it was even on his forty fourth birthday I thought about this, with all those lucky fours everywhere. Being forty four was so far into the future it was untouchable, inconceivable to be that age.

This week on November the fifth it was my forty fourth birthday. I’d expected reaching forty four would be ‘a moment’ for me but actually the day sort of passed me by. Chris and I were up in North Yorkshire with my family to celebrate mine and my mum’s birthday - we share the same day - and see the village fireworks. We were also there to visit my dad who recently turned eighty, as we have been regularly for the last couple of months.

We’re visiting because dad’s been diagnosed with an untreatable oesophageal cancer. For the last couple of years he’s been unable to swallow and despite all the tests, the cancer wasn’t picked up until he couldn’t breathe and needed a tracheotomy. Needless to say this has thrown his and our lives into a new light. Forty four doesn’t seem such a lucky age anymore. All I care about is how he and my family feel but it has also been every emotion to me. My emotions are volatile, changing from one to another without warning. I’m devastated and sad, and yet filled with love and pride for him and what he’s done for us.

We are spending lots of time together visiting art galleries and things we all like doing. There aren’t many accessible things a short distance from North Yorkshire for someone who can’t eat or drink but we’re hunting them out.

My parents and sister live two hours north from us in Swaledale, the miles aren’t long but the trip is slowed by the many moorland hills and valleys in-between Hebden Bridge and there. It is one of the most beautiful drives, filled with meadows, moor, wildlife and right now, autumn colour and incredible light shows. I can feel a future watercolour project burning in the back of mind emerging from these drives.

Today, back here above Hebden Bridge, it looks to be a day with some dry spells and I’ve decided the best birthday present I can give myself this year, as is true most years, is the rest of the day off in the garden. While we were with my family a little box of bulbs arrived back at home containing Tulipa praestans ‘Shogun’, Tulipa hageri ‘Little Beauty’ and some extra Narcissus ‘Thalia’. I’m going to plant these out and divide a few plants, our Pulmonaria and Geums to keep spreading the colour.

My dad showed me how to divide plants and grow cuttings from his cacti when I was around the age of four. Helped the three of us set up our little veg patches with colourful plastic spade and fork sets. Almost impossible to imagine those moments blossoming into a life anchored in gardens.

Gardening keeps me level. My feelings can be a deep well that if I take the lid off can risk drowning me. Gardening offers something to hold onto. The world today is full of unimaginable horror, lurching toward division and hate, but day-to-day I see caring communities and a kindness in everyone, it is still there.

Gardening is inherently about care and planning for a better future. For my forty fourth year I will continue to choose that path, the path of kindness.

“We’re like sun and rainy weather
Sometimes we’re a hit together
Me and I
Gloomy moods and inspiration
We’re a funny combination
Me and I”
- Abba

Each morning we wake and immediately look to our daily weather forecast through the three small stone windows. Today it’s a pure grey-white, everything shrouded in mist, brightened by a strong sun behind.

I’m slow to get out of bed today. After a week of sleepless nights, I took a tablet desperate for one night of sleep. It worked and I feel groggy from both the sleep and tablet’s combined effects.

On my mind is watering the houseplants. I’m worried about our Pachira aquatica - nicknamed Eddy after our friend whose amazing plant inspired me to buy one - I neglected it last month and it started losing its palmately compound leaves. The Schefflera arboricola too in Topher’s office. Houseplant worry gets me out of bed, watering them is the first thing I do.

Following the annual hedge cut we can see into the garden again from the top floor and I look at the teasel silhouettes rimmed by the glow of bright diluted light. “I should go and take photos but I’m too tired,” I say to Topher trying to justify my laziness.

It’s a two coffee morning. Our cat Rumbles has developed a routine of herding me into the living room for a morning cuddle to warm his paws. We watch France 24 to catch up on the world’s horrors in its reasoned analytical way, far better than the inadequacy of British political media.

Apologising to Rumbles I move him off to gaze out the window again. I thought the mist would have gone by now to make way for the sunny Autumn day ahead. “I’ll get showered… I should take photos.” I say again, trying to muster motivation.

It works this time though, from somewhere the motivation comes, and I rush upstairs, shove on some trousers and socks, then grab my camera. Unlocking the front door I’m met by the warmth of the morning on my bare arms and face. Quiet. Quiet as snow. Quiet as autumn mist.

A nasturtium with impossibly beautiful bronzed orange flowers has found a way to climb into the berried cotoneaster that forms the living roof of our old pigsty. I love this area where we store logs bought and coppiced from our land. Small planting areas are a slow project to establish wildflowers and cultivated plants.

I duck under strings of cobweb across the entrance to our main garden, surrounded by hedges. The webs decorated by mist and light, I don’t want to break them. Something barks in the distance, either a dog or a deer.

Looking at the tan brown teasel and echinops stems, the pale glow of miscanthus and calamagrostis grasses, a pop of colour here and there from asters bursting into flower. I feel a happiness and peace come over me. Glad to have stepped out, to have this space.

Autumn is one of my favourite seasons, but I say that about every season. Whichever day it is, that’s my favourite season. Our gardens connect us to the seasons in amplified ways. I love the life of nature, no wonder I feel this way.

Gardens accentuate seasonal shifts. The multitude of plants I’ve grown are each softened by the mist and catch the light in their own unique way. I feel safe here, surrounded by the hedges, the familiarity of the plants and wildlife that live in them. Just the act of being here, to stand and stare for a moment. It brings calm and reassuring inward thinking, making sense of it all.

I guess I grow our garden to catch the seasons, to celebrate the way that constant change makes me feel more myself. I lift my camera to photograph cobwebs across the cenolophium seed heads.

Thinking back to my old blog posts that were more diary like, I miss those days. Writing for the sake of writing and the freedom of creativity it brought. I feel I can’t do that with my newsletter, that each email should have distinct purpose and practical guidance for people. I’ll lose subscribers if I flood their inboxes with my random thoughts.

Is that the best garden writing? To only ever be practical. Gardens are about lives, the people who live in them. I decide not to send the newsletter, perhaps I can just put a gallery on my site or a few pictures into the void of Instagram that sucks our souls dry in the hope of its algorithm permitting us to show our pictures to people who followed us to see them.

But the garden is so moving today, perhaps because I’ve slept properly for the first time in a long time. Or that it looks how I’ve hoped it would for so long. I’m moved so much that I am reminded that yes, garden writing can be important and creative. Often beautiful.

I feel more me today for whatever reason. Feelings the garden at this point in autumn has given me are rising up. They won’t last, emotions are as changing as the seasons. I want to share it, to say to the world ‘I hope you experience this feeling too’. Writing for writing’s sake, free and caring.

Looking out the window, the mist has lowered into the valleys, only the peaks of the Pennine Hills visible from where I sit. Our garden path on one of those peaks is flooded with sunlight. Before I know it, I’ve written and hit send.

Top tomatoes

I’m trialing 12 different cultivars of tomato for Gardeners’ World Magazine, three of each cultivar. How happy they all are.

Most have flowers about to open. This weekend I will need to start stringing them to our polytunnel’s beams to keep them upright.

Interestingly I sowed them much later than I normally would at the end of March, yet their growth has been much better. Suggesting any kind of cold getting to tomatoes by sowing earlier in spring does more harm than I’d realised. This is my best batch of plants to date - as always, grown peat free and organically.

The only other difference this year is that I didn’t plant them lower in soil or pot them into bigger pots. I just grew them later and planted them straight out once they’d reached a decent size.

They are a mix of the toughest cultivars, including my usual favourites ‘Apero’, ‘Golden Crown’ and ‘Green Zebra’. I’ll share the results in the mag next year.

Squashes and perennial veg

Here you can see our cucurbits on the left. A mix of courgettes and winter squash. Last year was a washout for them, they needed more sun and less rain. I’m optimistic that this year our cucurbits will be a success again, they’re usually easy to grow. To avoid slug problems, I grow them in pots until they have 2-3 proper leaves after their two seed leaves. By which point they’re big and burly enough, with spiky stems and hairs to deter most slugs. They will grow rapidly at that point, when planted on a good week in June, which helps them outgrow any nibblers.

On the right are a range of edible perennials I’ve been growing from seed for our garden. This tray is all destined for a new perennial edible garden I’m helping start for the charity, Grow + Graze (more on this in future).

Forever poppies

Papaver somniferum, the opium poppy, appeared in our polytunnel in the first year we moved in. I’ve let one of two plants flower and set seed ever since. They are a delight. I throw the seeds around the garden where they germinate less reliably every other year when a gap emerges - poppies need bare soil to germinate. Each flower lasts a day or two before the fragile petals fall and the beautiful seed heads appear.

Pot’s Growing On?

With a good week’s worth of rain, I’ve been able to work through the enormous backlog of seedlings I had piling up in our polytunnel and propagation areas outside. This was a big relief! Both for the plants to get growing and because watering them all was becoming a pain in the bum.

As you can see in the above photo, you wouldn’t know I’ve planted anything cos the table’s still full! Next on my todo list is to plant out our purple sprouting broccoli (right of the photo), the dahlias at the back and to deal with that tray of basil...

I really should be reported for crimes against basil for not planting these seedlings into their own pots by now. I can hear them squeaking their leaves together to get out. My only excuse is that I’ve had hundreds of other seedlings to plant up. I promise they are my next task. After the broccoli…

I’m growing three different Penstemon from the twizzle series: purple, scarlet and coral. I love the colours and flower shape of these penstemon, having grown them from seed in the past. Unfortunately, I always plant them out too soon and they die, this year I plan to grow these into much larger plants before planting them into the garden. I may even keep them in pots until next spring.

I wanted to share them here because everyone says dust fine seeds won’t grow in regular multipurpose peat free compost. Our penstemon say otherwise, their seeds are dust particle size and look how healthy they are.

I have lots of seedlings and cuttings on the go - it’s fun to me, to see how all these plants grow. I love it, seeing if there’s a new leaf or more roots.

New perennial edible areas

This spring I’ve been concentrating on some new perennial edible areas, such as this design I’ve been using as a case study in my Garden Design Guide. It’s just been planted, as you can see but everything is growing rapidly since it rained. The chicken wire is doing its job, keeping our chickens out until the plants are larger, at which point they will be chicken proof and I’ll remove the wire. Our farm is almost all permanent planting, so could be called permaculture.

Allotment crops

After vowing never to grow potatoes again every year, I am of course still growing some, ‘Sarpo Mira’ and ‘Anya’ (Pink Fir Apple offspring). Keep it simple and small, with less to harvest. They’re looking healthy and so far untouched by the scourge of pheasants, that like to dig up the potatoes and peck them.

Chards and red orach. Elsewhere I have various salad crops and some asparagus, if a bit slow. All of our gooseberry, rhubarb and raspberries are coming on a treat.

Chamomile tea?

The three chamomile plants I grew last summer have become three hundred, which means we will be well covered for tea all year! If you peer into this wilderness, you’ll see our salad crops are actually growing among them.

Floof

Spring was so lovely it felt like summer had been with us for a long time but it’s really only just getting started, which is why I’ve been surprised by the incredible growth since it started raining last week. Our garden has gone from ground level to waist height almost literally overnight.

It’s the volume that caught me off guard, at once floofy and dense, as though the ground has risen. Which is partly why I don’t mind the buttercups, they’ve become part of a single rising mass that is our garden’s ecosystem.

Read more about why I’m not weeding out creeping buttercups this year

One slightly disappointing thing I’ve noticed is that our allium flowers don’t seem as strong this year, for the first time in four seasons of growth. Some of the leafy shoots haven’t flowered at all. I’m putting this down to the fact last spring and summer were incredibly gloomy and wet. No doubt impacting the amount of energy each plant could store up.

I’ll keep an eye on them next year to see if they bounce back or continue to decline. If it’s the latter, it may well be that they aren’t as tolerant of competition as their ‘Purple Sensation’ counterparts. My hunch is definitely toward the lack of energy caused by last year’s weather because it’s affecting them all, even those without much crowding.

I feel like I’m on repeat telling you about our herb garden as I covered it in detail last week, but I’ll include it here by way of an update. The main shift in such a short space of time is that Leucanthemum vulgare and Centranthus ruber ‘Albus’ are in full flower. As exciting, the three new rosemary plants I added are suddenly producing lots of strong growth, boding well for impact in the future (you can’t see them yet in photos). A couple of salvias are growing back nicely too, as is the replacement bay tree. I probably will remove a lot of the creeping buttercup and aquilegia from the right hand bed because I want to plant more herbs in that spot.

Last year I enlarged the small strip bed in front of our pigsty. While it looks like a patch of overgrown grass in this photo, and it is, there are also some plants I added that are starting to take off: Leucanthemum vulgare, which you can see, plus geraniums, persicaria and sanguisorba that you can’t. I can assure you however, they’re growing well and will be visible at some point this summer! A challenge of this bed (and another to the left) is that I’ve discovered the entire area is only about 15cm deep. The whole thing used to be a concreted carpark. Sadly this means when it was hot and dry, everything was truly frazzled and we lost a Cytisus planted in winter. Every now and then I’ll mow around the curved beds to define them.

Other than the plants, I can tell you we have bird nests everywhere, a healthy population of hedgehogs and a new member of our wild roe deer family. Today insects were abundant, especially various bee species. I even saw my first hornet! Wonderful.

Have fun, this is such a positive time of year, as gardens race out of control!

What a phenomenal start to spring it’s been! Weeks of warming sunshine, the best displays of spring wildflowers I’ve known in years and the daffodils are relishing it too. Spring is undeniably here and while there may be colder nights, we’re too far into the year for seriously cold weather which means: all systems are grow people!

This week I thought it would be helpful to recap on articles relevant to this time of year to help get your garden set for the most flowerful summer possible. I’ve listed a bunch of free-to-access articles as well as lots of lessons from my £25/year wild garden design course - sign up today for full access to everything.

I’ve absolutely tonnes of new content planned for the rest of this year heading your way soon.

And a big thank you, Wild Way has just flown passed 6,000 subscribers and it’s been named as the 13th most popular Climate and Nature newsletter in the world and rising! What?! Wow! It’s good to know we can all make a difference with small actions for wildlife, that’s what the Wild Way is all about.

1) Let’s grow!

What to do this month

I can sum up what to do in April with one word: propagate. Get sowing, get dividing, start cuttings. But if you’d like to read more, check out my ideas for early spring.

Read full story >

2) Think plants!

3) Design for the future

4) Perennial edibles are all the rage!

5) Wildlife balance

And most important of all, of course, is to just go outside and have fun! You don’t actually have to do anything at all.

Yesterday I had to force myself back inside, tear myself away from the beauty of snow and ice to head back to the real world and do some work. When your heart and mind opens to the natural world, it is easy to become lost in it forever.

We’re coming up to a week of snow, turning our world monochrome overnight, a silencing mesmeric wonder. As I type this to you this morning, warming my hands on a coffee and a follow up Earl Grey tea, we’ve faced the second night of cold, reaching -9C for us at our elevated position of almost 1,000ft just below the peat moor.

This kind of freeze is a moment of reset for gardens across the country, plants know how cold it is. Hardy plants deploy a range of measures to cope, from urgently reducing the amount of liquid in their cells to prevent their cell walls exploding in the freeze, others have a built in anti-freeze. Many sacrifice the above ground parts to retreat beneath the earth.

Plantlife is smarter than given credit, it simply operates in a different way to us, using chemicals to sense the world, living on an alternative time scale. At one time slower, and yet perfectly in sync with the seasons at the same speed as us.

Ignoring the news with its perpetual fearmongering, I’ve avoided the madness of icy roads, staying close to home enjoying this rare natural moment. Given how people get on with this much snow up north, it makes us laugh how London grinds to a halt with a tiny dusting. My thoughts have slowed down to focus on an exciting new design project I’ve begun, and admiring the silhouettes of trees in and around the garden.

Most of our perennials have been flattened, as happens every year here, so I won’t need to do much cutting back in spring. Though the Panicum grasses remain stubbornly vertical, protecting insect life within. I know when the snow melts, like magic it will leave behind a mass of snowdrops. They’re continuing to grow right now under the protective icy blanket as we head toward January’s full moon toward the end of the month.

All of the water tanks I failed to empty are frozen solid. I pour a kettle of boiling water daily into our chickens’ water bowl, turning the solid block of ice into drinkable water for the daytime. Chickens are surprisingly hardy with insulating feathers, though we make sure they’re tucked away at night in their coop.

This year, I haven’t been focussed on new plants for our main wildlife garden because I’m excited about the many plants I’ve been stocking up on over the last four years. Oh, except, I’m reminded by the freeze, we do need a hardier scarlet flowered alternative to Penstemon ‘Andenken an Friedrich Hahn’. The remaining plant won’t survive this.

About to head into our fifth growing season I feel a reset within me, this freeze has come at the right time for it. Hard to believe so much time has passed since we moved to this remote spot. I’m now ready to make our garden feel fuller, not least because the plants I’ve been growing will be large enough to have the impact needed.

It’s not that I’m not ordering more seeds and plants, I am, but for our allotment and food production. We’ve had lots of success with food here, but last year wasn’t great due to the wet cold spring and I want to make sure that was a one off. So I’ve been researching and ordering vegetables, I’ll share in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, we venture out, careful not to slip on the ice. Around the area, it’s easiest right now to admire the shapes and structures of wild downy birch and sessile oak.

I’ll leave you with a few more photos from this past week. I thought it was useful to show you how cold it gets for us here, because then you’ll know everything we grow can survive these conditions.

Wrap up warm and enjoy this fleeting, freezing moment, it might help clear your mind as it is for me.

p.s. if you’re a paid subscriber, join me online on Monday for a big ol’ chinwag about your gardens and planning for the coming spring and summer…

You’ll all be familiar with Monstera deliciosa, the houseplant that proves everyone can remember botanical names. But did you know that, although the plant itself is toxic, it produces edible fruit? While in Madeira we had the chance to try it - so, is Monstera as deliciosa as claimed?

In short, no, but let’s first explore what it is. The fruit is the fertilised spathe, which is initially protected by the lighter hood called the spadix. You can see both in the above photo outside the place we stayed in Madeira, the spadix here are going brown. As the fruit is fertilised - the plant can self fertilise - the protective individual outer segments begin to fall away from the bottom up.

In this picture I’m a holding a fruit upside down and you can see where the segments have fallen away. We bought a fruit from the market in Funchal, the island’s capital city. There the trader who sold it to us explained how the fruit ripens along its length over a number of days, never at once. Saying it is known as the pineapple banana because it tastes of both.

The outer green scales brush off on the segments that are ripe, which can then be pulled away easily with a fork. It’s a lot like a pineapple in its appearance with smaller chunks. They are very distantly related.

What’s it like to eat?

Well, I found consistency is like a cross between a banana and a pineapple funnily enough, a bit slimey with more resistance than a banana and the taste is like a mild combination of the two, perhaps with a little strawberry. It reminded me of the flavour of Asian pear, albeit with a much softer texture. That sweet tropical flavour without overpowering.

Monstera deliciosa is from the western tropical and subtropical areas of South America. It can’t tolerate subzero temperatures but can tolerate dry low light conditions of homes around the world. On Madeira it grows as an ornamental and an edible.

The whole plant is mildly toxic to humans and pets due to its calcium oxalate content, which are thread-like crystals. Ripe portions of fruit are safe to eat, though my throat still had a slight reaction so I didn’t eat too much. It’s not too bad for you if you eat some raw, but will cause a burning or soreness in your throat, and potentially stomach upset.

If you grow Monstera deliciosa at home, it’s unlikely your plant will produce ripe fruit because of the small pots we grow them in. In the wild, Monstera deliciosa is a large climber or scrambler, and would need to be many metres in size to fruit. That said, there’s no harm in giving it a try. Just grow it in a much larger pot and fertilise and water well.

Personally, I wouldn’t go out of my way to eat Monstera fruit. It does taste nice but isn’t the most satisfying fruit I’ve ever eaten. The way it ripens is too fussy, though perhaps there’s an opportunity for someone to cultivate a version that is easier to harvest in future.

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I was given this Nepenthes albomarginata x maxima 'Red Beauty' by grower Sean Higgs to try as a houseplant growing in peat free compost. And as you can see, while still young, it’s growing very well indeed.

Need to know information about Nepenthes albomarginata x maxima 'Red Beauty'

Nepenthes ‘Red Beauty’ is a hybrid between Nepenthes maxima from the New Guinea islands and Nepenthes albomarginata from Borneo to Sumatera. No doubt bred using specific forms of these two species, for instance, favouring forms with a red tinge.

Carnivorous plants can, on the one hand, be the easiest plants to grow, and on the other, one of the hardest. Nepenthes however are one of the easier carnivorous plants to grow.

Cutting to the chase, the biggest challenge growing carnivorous plants is the pH of the water, they like neutral to acidic water. If you live in an alkaline area (signalled by limescale in kettles) you will find it harder to grow them unless you collect rainwater to water them with. Some plan…

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This is one of my favourite houseplants out of those I’ve ever grown. It was given to me by Alan Bridger who kindly donated hundreds of succulents to our open garden plant sales for the National Garden Scheme when we used to live in London. It was labelled as Opuntia, and I believe it is either a cultivar or hybrid of Opuntia canterae (previously called Opuntia elata).

I am growing three cuttings I planted in spring in a handmade ceramic pot given to me by West Yorkshire artist, Rob Hopper. I love the colour and shiny-smooth texture of the segments and the way they grow upward like pebble sculptures.

Need to know about Opuntia canterae

All cacti are succulents, but not all succulents are cacti - think of cacti as a subgroup within succulents. Opuntia are a genus of cactus from North and South America. Though they were introduced around the world and can now be seen in the wild from warmer parts of Europe to Australia.

Opuntia canterae is endemic to Uruguay (Kew) and is fast growing, er…

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I thought I’d start a new series of posts around growing a new exotic garden indoors. Shining a spotlight on some of the new additions to my studio and rest of the house in case it inspires you to do the same!

Although the Wild Way is primarily about supporting wildlife at the same time as creating beautiful and productive gardens for us, sometimes it is worth exploring how important plants are to making us happy. Indoor plants are a key part of that because they are usually the plants we’re closest too. We eat, work, sleep and wake up next to them.

I wanted to start with this little fern that we’ve had for a couple of years, Phlebodium aureum 'Blue Star'. The truth is, I nearly killed it by placing it in too shady a room with too small a window, but since moving it, our Phlebodium aureum 'Blue Star' has quickly perked up and is one of my new easy faves.

Need to know info about Phlebodium aureum 'Blue Star'

'Blue Star' …

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Now that it’s half dead, our garden is looking the best it’s looked all summer. Wait, what?

Stems and grasses glowing in autumn sun. I guess it should’ve come as no surprise, after all, I did plan for the garden to have autumn and winter structure. Yet it did come as a surprise this week because for us, it’s been a challenging year on all counts. Especially with a lack of colourful flowers due to summer’s low light levels causing many plants, such as dahlias and althaea, to grow well but not flower enough.

But let’s pause for a second and discuss the plants that are flowering right now, looking as good as anything from earlier in the year. It strikes me that with the right choices, while October undoubtedly is the end of the main growing season, it can easily be every bit as good as any month from March to September.

Persicaria, agastache, salvia, asters, anemone. If you have a garden full of these and nothing else, October would be your peak of the year. And it would be spectacular!

In our garden of course, I’m aiming for ‘something’ to happen in every month of the year. Which means a mix and mingle of different plants. Our October colour champions are still quite small as I let them grow enough to divide and spread around, rather than buy everything in. A process that is taking longer than I had expected for some plants. Eventually though, they will flow in and around our big autumn structural plants like the grasses.

Despite our lack of colour this October, why I’m saying our garden is looking the best it’s looked since probably the alliums in May, is for shape and texture. I was out this week spinning in circles on the path looking at it all. It caught me off guard after a lacklustre summer.

I suppose the surprise of this happening came because I considered it a bad year for the garden, when it was just a bad year for colourful flowers. The plants didn’t care, they were quietly getting on with what they wanted to do. If I’d have paid more attention to them, and less to the pressures of having something to share on social media, I’d have realised 2024 has been a fantastic year for establishing the main perennial structure.

Giving me a chance now to decide where to divide and spread some of the colourful flowers I shared above, and to now see how they will work with the autumn dieback of other plants.

So, thank you garden for doing what you do, bringing me so much joy and happiness, and sorry I wasn’t paying attention to the right places - you know what is best.

p.s. learn more about one of the most important plants for October colour, asters, in part one of my new aster trial, available for paid subscribers...

What is it about the garden in autumn that I love so much? Is it the cricket warming itself in the sun by our door? The pollinators luxuriating on the late flowers? Is it the flowers themselves and the fading colours? Or the effortlessness of the momentarily abundant food harvests?

Perhaps it’s all these things and something more. With an end of a journey comes the excitement for another, not yet, but one day. My mind is certainly exploring 2025, in particular a refocus on food and edible crops.

It has been a fairly dire year for edibles, not what I was hoping for because of the cold, wet and dull spring. Casual autumn however has my spirits lifted, crops are coming now without any effort. Constant courgettes and winter storing squashes almost ready to harvest. Dwindled numbers compared to a normal year perhaps, but enough to cheer me up. Happiest of all are the tomatoes that this week are finally starting to ripen in huge quantities, just in time to make sauces to freeze and to enjoy sliced with meals. Or more often, straight from the plant!

Chamomile has been brilliant this year on the allotment where plants have grown huge and laden with flowers. To make tea, pick the freshest flowers, lay them on a tray and let them air dry on a sunny windowsill for a couple of weeks before storing them in dry, clean jars. I’m allowing a lot of the flowers to remain, hoping they set seed to naturalise on the plot. True chamomile for tea is the German chamomile, Matricaria chamomilla, an annual, not the perennial, which tastes of rubber tires.

Last year I planted a new autumn raspberry patch using my favourite cultivars, which I’ve trialled and tested around the country in different gardens. They are ‘Joan J’, ‘Polka’ and ‘All Gold’. Right now we’re enjoying delicious pickings, the fruits look beautiful, so vibrant and plump compared to those in shops - almost look like sweets. ‘All Gold’, the yellow raspberry, is a bit of a novelty I grow purely for fun and colour but it does well and tastes great.

Around the garden late season flowers bring the final flourish of colour, stretching out the growing season in a joyous way, not least for volumes of pollinators they support. Largely in the daisy family, asters, helenium and rudbeckia, though bistorts also hit the spot.

It’s a little thing, but adding to my sense of renewal and forward looking excitement is a basic bookshelf I bought for my studio at home. We both have a lot of books and we’ve faffed around deciding where to place shelves, the books locked away in boxes or piles.

The other week, prompted by Alice Vincent, I realised how much I needed something nearby to store my notebooks and art materials, as well as to have books to refer to and inspire me.

With Chris’ help, I put them up last weekend and over this week have been having fun organising it. Enjoying the process of placing books that I cherish, and thinking about the watercolour and wildlife books I want near me for easy access.

It’s also a stationary lover’s dream because the cupboard is full of my art supplies. Beautiful paper, paints, pens, pencils, charcoal etc. I’m using them more often now and it’s great they have a home.

I enjoy dead seedheads and stems in the garden, as well as bringing some into the house. The varied shapes and muted colours appeal to me, they’re relaxing, especially when they come from plants I love and grow outside. I simply have to look at them in winter to be reminded of our plant friends. Ornamental grasses are fantastic for this and although Miscanthus doesn’t seem to entirely love our Yorkshire garden, there is enough for a tuft.

To dry stems you can tie them upside down somewhere dry. Or my usual technique is to place them in a vase and allow them to dry naturally that way. Dried stems last for years, limited only when they become too laden with dust. At which point, you can compost and replace.

I recently designed the terrace outside the IOU Hostel in Hebden Bridge, a special place run by the IOU Creation Centre charity for creatives to stay, run workshops and retreats, and generally immerse themselves in the magic of the Calder valley. Throughout this year I’ve worked with the team and a number of talented craftspeople to transform the little space with a number of subtle but key changes - some of it a mindshift rather than a physical adjustment. I thought I’d share some of the ideas with you.

When we first moved to the area, I clocked the IOU Hostel front, with its bold orange block colour. To me, this was a simple choice that made the building iconic in its own right. Every choice I made was done with respect to the existing building and its surroundings.

Before, the space you see above was on multiple levels with access to the front door, but then steps leading down to a sunken patio area. The steps, a ramp and scaffolding-like metal barriers made the space smaller, darker because it was already at the base of a slope, cluttered and less accessible for people with reduced mobility. We also wanted to make it an easier space for cyclists to use, as the hostel has lots of visitors with bikes making the most of the area.

Our considerations and aims were to make the space accessible, better for biodiversity, flexible for creative workshops and retreats, and visually interesting.

Accessibility was the biggest task, though you wouldn’t know it from the photos. Making the whole space level was a challenge, which landscaper Alan Richardson and his team met head on. Even in the far corner, where there was a particularly awkward and narrow dropped passage, they managed to level it to round the back. There were lots of utilities and drainage pipes across the terrace to deal with run off from the hillside towering above. And the odd surprise deep holes.

Levelling continues to a small patio area around the back, which we made a tiny bit larger to accommodate wheelchairs with turning space. It’s a lovely shaded area should anyone need a more private spot. In this space I’m excited about the planting which includes some tough ornamental groundcovers, plus many local wildflowers including valerian, wood melick, ferns and foxgloves.

Furniture was chosen for flexibility, weight to not blow away but still be liftable, to be able to move it around, stack it up etc. This means the area can be used in any way the guest workshops and retreats would like. Steve Taylor of Lamm Furniture designed the tables, a mix of sizes that can be joined together or split out, and made the oak tabletops. The metal frames and the pergola were expertly crafted by Jackson’s Welding.

The graphite black pergola idea came to me early on as a sculptural frame for everything else. I wanted it to match the existing colours in the building windows and doors, and to be as slim as it possibly can be to feel elegant rather than bulky. Standing inside the final frame, it has an psychological effect of feeling in a room, but surrounded by nature.

Flexibility was again key, the pergola can be left as it is, a sculptural feature, or sun shades can be clipped on in summer, and festoon lights added in winter. One day we might grow one or two airy climbers up it, but once the planting gets going, and much larger, this may feel too much, and I wouldn’t want to block light or views to the meadow.

Nick did an absolutely fantastic job of realising the pergola, although it looks simple, it does some wonderful things. The strong box nature of it draws from the rectangle of that iconic orange facade. I set the challenge of having no central support legs, which is no mean feat spanning a width of 6 metres! So it looks simple, but is technically complicated.

Planting is done in different areas, first is the feature strip along the terrace with ornamental plants, wildflowers and some edibles, such as mint, chives and strawberries. Geum ‘Totally Tangerine’ is the star plant here, mirroring that iconic orange from spring to autumn. It will take a year for this border to fill out and come into its own. Planted and looked after by myself and Farrell Brown.

Halfway through the project though, it became clear to me that the main event was already on site - the large grass bank above the terrace. Some overwhelming large shrubs in the terrace border we decided to re-home (a towering Mahonia and overgrown Lonicera nitida) because they weren’t that useful for wildlife, given the location next to woodland, and they were blocking the view to the grass bank.

This grass bank we plan to enhance as a wildflower meadow. Management is the key to success with meadows. That means cutting it back once a year in late-summer/early-autumn and removing all clippings to reduce the nutrient value and let light in for other plants to have a chance. Into this we have planted a few wild shrubs, and one orange witch hazel, as well as some wildflower plugs. But we plan to seed it with plants I have carefully chosen for these conditions based on other meadows locally that match. Focussing on perennial wildflowers and not annual wildflowers, except for parasitic eyebright, is another key to this meadow’s success.

Personally, this project was a dream for me. Being a new resident in the area, it was a gift to let me give something back to the whole community who have made me feel so welcome. Especially the artistic community who it’s been my lifelong passion to support. Thank you Joanne, Jill, Caren and the whole IOU team for being so incredibly lovely and supportive throughout.

From a design practice perspective, community, charity, business and public space gardens are where I want to focus in future. To bring wildlife and nature to as many people as possible.

I hope that’s given you a good initial overview of the project and I’ll no doubt share more from the IOU Hostel in future, especially next year when the plants really get going!

I’m writing today’s newsletter as quickly as possible to get outside because, dare I say it, it’s sunny! At last! And look, our onions are cheering with their leaves in the air. Grown from seed, these red and brown onions are loving the wetter year but even they will confess to wanting more warmth and sunshine. I’ve weeded around them a bit, leaving the purple dead nettle because… well, I like it.

Our salad patch has done well too, with more pick-and-pick-again lettuce than we can eat and the best year for radishes I’ve ever known. Normally radishes don’t do brilliantly for me, I sow a lot to make up for it. So in a year when they’ve all grown huge, we are inundated with rads.

Our mangetout are continuing to supply us with food, we’ve used them in about five meals so far and there are no signs of slowing down. Mangetout are currently up there as top of my hassle free harvests for ease vs yield.

I’m conducting a large potato trial for Gardeners’ World Magazine this year, reported next year. A huge swathe of the plot is dedicated to this and so far, they are luxurious. I just hope the wet soil doesn’t also mean luxurious slugs.

In this bottom bit of our main garden, I was calling the Vortex until I quickly decided that is too ridiculous a name, roe deer have been very keen visitors this year. We’re clearly growing delicious snacks for them in this spot. I stuck a pot on a spade as a makeshift scarecrow and to my surprise, for now it seems to have worked! Which makes me think, is it time for a scarecrow revival? (the answer to that is yes btw).

So far, deer seem to prefer eating persicaria, geranium and Japanese anemone, leaving the asters and helenium (above) to it. Perhaps they have a very refined palette and don’t lower themselves to daisies.

Around the polytunnel is our wilder area which is really overrun with nettles this year, in fact, I’m not sure yet what to do about them. The mini meadow is all nettle this summer because they’ve spread rapidly in the wet of the last year. I have begun cutting them down, at least in the central meadow area to try and get sun back down to the grass. I’ll leave plenty around the outside for wildlife. Speaking of which, I’ve been overjoyed to see insects return in this week’s sunny days.

In the polytunnel I’m hoping this spell of hot sunny weather speeds our tomatoes, chillies and aubergines along. I did sow our tomatoes later this year as an experiment and I believe they have grown more strongly as a result. The reason being that they weren’t sitting around in pots inside on dull early days of spring for as long. This does mean they are later to fruit and ripen, though they are smothered in flowers and young tomatoes, so it can’t be long now.

All in all, a few days of warm, dry, sunny weather does the garden the world of good. Plants noticeably grow far quicker each day, making it a joy to pop outside and see what’s changed. A new flower, slightly longer stems, new leaves. Butterflies are fluttering around the carefully chosen plants for them, and I’m hoping they’ll breed quickly now for many more later in summer.

Of course, all of this does us the world of good too, so stop reading and get out there in the sun! And with that advice, I’m heading out. Have a lovely weekend.

Our new table has arrived! It’s been made out of beautiful chunky oak by Pinewood Designs. I wanted hardwood to survive outdoors in UK weather and oak can last for 10 - 20 years outdoors untreated, even longer if it is treated with wood oil. And of course, wood is sustainable because it can be grown and rots down naturally eventually. It’s also seriously heavy (four of us could barely carry the top on its own) which means it isn’t going to blow away in storms. We love it and we’re grateful finally for somewhere to sit.

Visually I wanted something extremely simple with no edging or details, just simple-simple beautiful wood. I’m writing this on it now and can’t wait for some proper warm days to write and draw outside.

This completes our patio area and the only hard landscaping we plan to do, the rest will be plants. Around the patio I’ve been adding new plants to surround the patio, planting shorter ground covers along the raised front edge so it will feel like we’re floating on plants. The young plants are still quite small.

Around the rest of the main garden everything is starting to establish now. We’re still a long way from being ‘full’ but these are the exciting times of starting a garden, having a play, filling gaps. Though I am trying to hold myself back from dividing too many plants this year. I’ve been guilty of dividing plants too soon over our first few years, slowing establishment down. So this year I’m trying to just let everything be. To build their energy reserves and increase in size.

So far, the alliums appear to be settling in very well, for some it’s their fourth year. Because spring was so wet, some stems were eaten by slugs but most have continued to flower. Meanwhile Geum ‘Totally Tangerine’ and Astrantia ‘Buckland’ have been filling out nicely. The Astrantia in particular are really hitting their stride.

This corner at the bottom of the main garden is so far almost untouched from when we first moved in, I’ve simply expanded the bed out, adding the Astrantia and other plants in front of it. That said, I have planted a few things into it that I hope will add to the area visually in time, such as Japanese anemone, the alliums and Persicaria.

Outside the front of the house our herb beds have been an unexpected challenge! The reason is not hardiness but strong wind which snaps all of the shrubby rosemary and sage with ease. I’m trying a different, reputedly stronger stemmed rosemary this year. In the meantime, I’ve planted out cuttings I grew last year from a sage that was already here, increasing their number around the area.

Down in the polytunnel over the last week I finally planted the tomato seedlings into the ground. Which meant I did have to remove the beautiful opium poppy seedlings but tomatoes must. Their growth on hitting new soil has been rapid.

It never fails to amaze me how fast cucurbits and beans grow. From big seeds, roots and leaves explode outward in a matter of days. Another week or two and they’ll be big enough to plant out, when they have two to three true leaves.

Another plant that amazes me with speedy growth is cuckoo flower leaf cuttings. Place the leaves on damp compost and cover. A week later little roots appear followed by leaves and shoots of new plants. Soon I’ll pot these into individual pots to grow on.

Lower down, the hazel trees I coppiced are all reshooting with deep red shoots from the roots and stumps.

Last year I planted a wisteria to grow up an alder tree and I didn’t realise its rootball hadn’t expand beyond the pot ball all summer, and it dried out, killing a number of stems. Thankfully over winter, what was left must have finally rooted because it is now firmly in the ground and strong new shoots are growing.

Our allotment has been really slow this year, or I should say, I’ve been really slow on the allotment. It’s been so wet it’s been tough with the claggy soil and I guess, not so nice to be out there. Still, we’re catching up and a large bed of potatoes is growing very well indeed.

Our compost heaps can get so large I decided against trying to contain them with sides. Instead, I pile everything up on one side this year, to be turned into the other side next year. Hopefully as ready to use compost. With a bit of gentle turning and stirring in between to help the process.

The owl box Chris and I made is still empty, prime estate with a view across the top meadow for future owls. We put it up too late and any owls will already have found their spots. However, yesterday I watched fledging great tit chicks scramble and flap around as they found their wings. Unbelievably cute if nerve-racking while they were vulnerable on the floor. In the stable we have a nesting pair of swallows, which we feel equally very protective of.

Down on the meadow its year of the lush grasses, the incredible volume of rain and the high water table has sent them into overdrive. Yellow rattle is keeping them somewhat under control and I’ve noticed what seems like more vetch than usual on the way. Knapweed and ragged robin don’t seem to have expanded their tiny colonies this year.

A curlew just flew overhead calling, telling me I need to wrap this up and enjoy the weekend. I hope you have a good one too and speak again next week, when we’re promised the warm weather really will be back.

While Chris is getting showered, I set off up the road from our room on the vineyard, or vigna, as they’re called in Italian. We drove past it on the way back last night from the restaurant in a nearby village and I need to see it on foot. A scene so full and colourful it could have been Great Dixter, the much loved garden in Kent, except this is a bunch of wildflowers on a roadside verge on the northern slope of Mount Etna. We’re at 578m of the volcano’s total 3,350m, still active it smoulders above us.

My heart beats faster as I approach the spot to find it’s more than a verge, it’s a superbloom of yellow broom and red valerian scattering the black basalt volcanic rock into the distance. I panic as I try to take it all in, snapping photos because time is short, we need to head off soon to our next stop, though my heart wants to stay. To take it all in, to remember this moment. To embed it inside me, informing gardens I create in future.

Huge elderflower trees grow, in mounding shapes reminiscent of supersized asters. Verbascum, euphorbia, poppies, chamomile, hawkbit, reseda; none of these plants are strangers to the UK and yet I haven’t seen them grown like this, as they like to grow in the wild. Dead stems from last year remain standing in places.

And all around, towering over everything, towering over me, is giant fennel, its round balls of yellow, some bright, others fading as they set seed. I’ve seen it growing in UK gardens and here it is, in the wild where it’s happiest, all over the landscape.

I feel the tension in my body float off into the air as though the landscape and the life it holds has released me from something.

Other topics…

• 19 things from RHS Chelsea Flower Show press day 2024

• A glimpse of a garden I designed with wild meadow in Clapham Old Town a few years ago in Elle Decoration

Over the course of the last week the sodden ground on our Yorkshire hill has finally begun to dry as the woods and grasslands start into growth with the longer days and warming soil. Drawing the incredible amounts of moisture from the land up into their expanding stems and leaves. With their rush of energy and the longed for warming sunshine, I too have felt the energy rise inside me with the return of the growing season.

I’m happy to be out on our allotment again, to be growing but also because I was worried at my lack of excitement over this long, wet and dull winter. Part of me worried I’d lost that enthusiasm I’ve clung to over the years but no, my body was just waiting for the right moment. And as I stepped onto the plot’s path, I looked for a simple job, that first little task, like a new leaf emerging to test the temperature. It came naturally to me again.

I looked at our heaps of compost at the top of the allotment, that had merged into one huge lump, and I could see good compost stating to form, rich and crumbly. So I set into sorting the pile, first using a large muck fork inherited with the farm for the bigger bits, then a spade to move the crumbly, almost-compost.

Hard work that felt good. Good to move my body in this way again, to run out of breath, stretch my muscles and test the strength of my arms and back after a particularly lazy winter. I need to build my fitness back up and gardening can help our core strength at the same time as a bit of cardio.

When we first moved here I spent ages researching sustainable compost bays, but hardwood is expensive these days and I eventually realised the obvious: you don’t need anything to make compost! So now we just have good old fashioned heaps that I’ve organised into three piles: the ‘almost-compost’, the ‘rotting down’ and the ‘new stuff’. I’ll turn them along the row like a pass-the-parcel over the next year, using the almost-compost on veg beds to make way for the new-stuff. I’d love to be able to produce all of our compost for the veg plot and I’m fairly confident it’s beginning to happen.

Then I cleared an area of ground, 1m wide by 3m long and used some of the almost-compost from the heaps to prep an area for our first mangetout seedlings. I love mangetout for the taste and also the ease of growing and using them. Spacing the plants about 20cm apart.

Around the little plants I pushed hazel twigs into the soft soil that I cut in winter from our hazel coppice. We have lots of pheasants around us, released irresponsibly into the wild by someone on another hill. Pheasants eat seedlings, with a particular liking for legumes, so I went overboard, surrounding the rows with extra barriers of twigs to try and protect them until growing tall.

Rhubarb never lets us down and also tells us when the growing season has begun. Our patch is full of leaves and stems now. It’s important to look for the flower stems too, they’re starting to appear among the leaves. Snap these off to ensure all energy goes into leaf production and not flowers.

Today I picked our first few stems which we’ll cook later with a handful of sweet cicely leaves to form compote.

With all of this going on, I finally sat down to work out a rough organisation for our allotment this year which I’ll show you below…

I rotate the crops in light green anticlockwise to minimise effects of soil born insects and fungi, such as carrot rootfly and clubroot on brassicas (you can see previous year plans here). It’s also useful for economic use of compost because onions and the allium family don’t need new compost, while the brassicas and pea family will. Allowing me to concentrate in certain areas, but over the course of five or so years, the whole plot receives its fair share.

The main change this year is that I’m moving the cut flowers to the furthest and least accessible bed at the bottom of the slope, and bringing the perennial veg bed slightly higher. This should make it easier for me to look after these year-round plants. I’ve also extended the horizontal path from a middle gate, which will make it easier for me to maintain the four main beds linked to it.

This year my aim is to increase efficiencies because I want to try and grow a bit more to be able to sell excess veg to local community veg schemes. Contributing what we can to the amazing local organic veg farming initiatives.

p.s. don’t forget paid subscribers can follow along with which crops I’m sowing and when in this post…

Today I stepped out to the garden in the first warm sunshine of the year, the kind when heat radiates back at us from walls. In the polytunnel the broad beans I sowed in autumn are suddenly flowering and I’m reminded just how beautiful those flowers are. Soon to be followed by delicious beans for meals.

Earlier in the week, all of our daffodils were flattened by incessant rain but as soon as the warmth comes, so does their mojo. They look really beautiful today in various shades. Last year I moved loads of the existing daffodils around to reorganise them. Brighter yellows are down in the wilder garden by the polytunnel.

In the main garden, I have lots of white and pale yellow daffodils such as ‘Thalia’, which interestingly is flowering at different rates all over the garden. Perhaps a sign of different microclimates or how wet and cold some parts of the soil in the garden are compared to others.

In the garden when we moved here were these lovely two tone daffodils, they look gorgeous on misty spring mornings. I dug up a couple of clumps tucked in beneath the hedge and redistributed them all around the main garden to increase their number and impact in future years.

Germination of seedlings in the polytunnel has been erratic so far because it’s been such a cold damp spring so far. Our three different kales took a long time to grow, though the seed I saved of ‘Russian Red’ from last year has grown the fastest and strongest. The slow pokes are finally catching up this week.

With the weather and ground warming, the larger ornamental grasses are just starting to grow, and it’s this point that you want to divide them. Leave it any later, and their new roots of ornamental grasses will have gone too deep. This is Calamagrostis brachytricha and I’ve also divided a Panicum.

Rhubarb is a good indicator of spring’s true arrival and in our Yorkshire garden it has only just grown enough in the last week to start harvesting. Not so far behind our old London allotment but slightly behind none-the-less, about two weeks. I have three established varieties and really must to a side-by-side taste test which I’ll tell you about, probably next week. Crumble time!

Mangetout I sowed in the polytunnel for an earlier crop, have been slow too. I know it’s the damp cold and not the compost because seedlings in the house in the same compost have grown fine. I’ll plant these out over the next week.

I thought you might like to see a before of our main patio before I start working on properly sorting it out this summer. We’ve ordered a new table set that should arrive shortly and I’ve been working on the height and width of the hedge behind for a couple of years to make it lower and narrower. Importantly and more interestingly however, is that I have been gradually loading up all of the beds around it with an ever increasing number of exciting plants.

I’ve been sharing some pictures on Instagram but I thought I’d treat you to a better look here. As an experiment I am not going to completely weed this area, instead I am going to see if the plants I’ve added will be able to grow alongside or outcompete the dandelions, couch grass and other vigorous wild flowers. Now, you know me, I don’t want to get rid of them completely, and they run amok around the garden, but here I would like to increase the variety of plants for enjoyment and for increased biodiversity. It’s a mix of wildflowers and ornamental plants - I’ll discuss what in more detail when I know they’ve worked. But you’ll spot Brunnera, Hellebore, Pulmonaria and Astrantia.

On the other side of the grass path, just to the right of the patio when facing it, I’m doing the same experiment with different plants. Here are most of my trial Pulmonaria (discussed in this month’s main newsletter for paid supporters). As you can see, they are doing an excellent job of standing their ground. You can also see the alliums in this area, which have been in for three years, have formed sizeable clumps with multiple plants in each. I cannot wait to see how many flowers there are this year!

Industrial farm chic? OK, it’s actually just a barrier I’m getting ready to protect some young crab apples from the visitor roe deer. These simply barriers seem to do the trick until the tree is big enough in a couple of years time. Stay tuned for the crab apple reveal in an upcoming newsletter.

I’ll leave you with something prettier, the Fritillaria meleagris I planted for my fortieth birthday a few years ago have reappeared! They didn’t do anything above ground at all in the first years but I am now seeing their leaves, and some flowers, popping up all over the place. I love Fritillaria so this is great news. It’s the start of the growing population.

Enjoy the spring weather if you have it where you are, and if you don’t, I really hope it does warm up for you too soon.

p.s. in case you missed it, this month’s main newsletter for paid supporters looks at my favourite Pulmonaria at the moment, fantastic suppressing ground covers. Thank you to everyone who is a paid supporter, you help make this little independent newsletter happen. Happy gardening everyone!

As I look out of the studio window at emerging leaves of sweet cicely, sun shines through, lighting the underside of its young leaves, their tender expanding surfaces filling with new chlorophyll. It triggers a feeling, close to comfort and happiness, I guess an inbuilt response to our species’ relief for the arrival of abundant food. Layered with my own excitement to witness the results of my planting and nurturing, dividing and moving. Days of warmth and sun, insects and colour.

This week I thought I’d share my feelings for the arrival of green in a photo diary because I find it hard to fully capture it in words. Relish in this short moment of luminosity.

As I sit here typing to you, the sweet scent of daffodils is drifting over to me from the table to the left of my desk. It’s the first time I’ve dusted off the vases collected from charity shops over the years for our National Garden Scheme open days in our old garden. Since moving to Yorkshire I haven’t used them very much but today, against my fuggy head from weeks of annoying insomnia, I wanted to bring some of spring indoors to cast that fug away.

Winter was mild and wet, the wettest in memory, trapping us indoors, adding to the dark. But this week, right now, warm sun is pouring in on me through the window and I can sense the movement of sap rising through millions of plants outside. Drawn upward by the sun from the ground to burble around their expanding leaves and stems, generating their energy to grow.

This week in the garden I’ve begun my circuits, round and round the plot, spying on the plants re-emerging all over the place. I’m drawn to do this out of curiosity and fun, I couldn’t stop myself even if I wanted to, which I don’t. It’s exciting watching what’s growing, from the plants I remember to those surprises I don’t. Each time I pop out, I notice something else, silver allium shoots next to exotic Sanguisorba leaves, the first shoot of Veronicastrum, the second set of leaves on the Astrantia, the first open flowers of pussy willow.

At this time of year it’s impossible not to be grateful for the daffodils, which flower in sequence from March until early May if you plant different varieties. Many of the daffodils in our garden were here before us, established long ago and it’s the earliest that are bold yellows. I wouldn’t have chosen to plant bold yellow myself, which was a mistake on my part, thank goodness they were already here because I would have missed their joy in all different shades. That bold yellow blasts away the dark and cold of winter. Like our jumble of second hand vases, now I recommend everyone plants as varied a mix of these wonderful yellow treasures.

Pulmonaria are striding into their prime faster than I can keep track of, some forming impressive hummocks of colour already in pink, blue, purple and white. I’m going to list and discuss my favourite pulmonaria cultivars in next week’s paid newsletter, which I’ve retitled Wild Way Explorer, because Wild Way Magazine didn’t really describe it properly. I’ll also list a bunch of Pulmonaria I don’t like, or don’t think are right for our garden, but might still be of value to other people - after all, we all have different opinions and I love that.

This week saw the spring equinox, the point when our orbit and tilt of the earth means daylight grows longer than night in the northern hemisphere until the summer solstice. On cue the frogs were splashing around and humming in chorus as they lay their frog spawn. Birds are flying around singing their song in the warmer, brighter days. Looking for nesting sites with their partners. Roe deer walk past the window on most mornings, the male bucks with furry antlers getting ready to challenge one another.

Spring appears to be pushing back whatever is causing my lack of sleep and filling me back up with happiness for seeing the life in our garden. Isn’t it great, being a gardener at this time of year?

p.s. for more inspiration for your garden this spring, please check out my new articles:

• Small garden design: become familiar with your outdoor space (my site)

• Small garden design: consider how you will use your outdoor space (my site)

• 10 steps to choosing plants like a pro for your garden (my site)