Serendipity in gardens

Turn your garden into a place of discovery and joyful chance encounters

Originally I’d planned to only have white daffodils in our main garden, but one misty spring morning I spotted these jonquilla daffodils glowing in a shady corner changing my opinion

Early spring can be wonderful, when the sun shines on newly long days, with leaves of perennials and shoots of bulbs beginning to appear from the ground, or buds on trees and shrubs. Every day I set out, on a patrol of our garden to see what new thing has appeared that I hadn’t noticed. A treasure hunt for plants.

I guess I’m addicted to it because I can’t stop, whether it’s walking the same routes through our garden, looking at other people’s front gardens or along verges and woodland floors in the wild. Wild places have an advantage because we don’t know them as well, or they are larger spaces, giving them a better opportunity to surprise us. A flower here, a combination there.

Although it’s fun to see familiar plants return, seeing how they’ve grown larger or continue being happy, that feeling of discov…