No good comes of repining, so let me note one special thing I saw at Nymans on that rather bleak March day, a thing that can be planted by any of us during the coming autumn with an assurance of immediate effect next spring. You know how truly right daffodils look in grass? It may … Continue reading A Gardener’s Haste Makes Waste
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Indoor Gardening: A Happy Journey Through Winter.
The fashion for growing plants indoors is very understandably on the increase. The lead had been given to us by the Scandinavia countries, where the climate must be more difficult to manage than our own, and where the inhabitants go to the most elaborate lengths to ensure a supply of living vegetation and greenery in … Continue reading Indoor Gardening: A Happy Journey Through Winter.
Winter Rebels
Flower Picking "To Spite" The Cold.
Garden For The Eyes-Write For The Ears
The watchers out on the grass could see the interior of the rooms illuminated by the savage glow. The paneling of the hall had caught, and even as they looked they saw the canvas of a portrait give an extra little spurt of a yellower flame and flutter without its frame to the floor. This … Continue reading Garden For The Eyes-Write For The Ears
Bugbane: The Angel Of The *Fall*
Not often now, in my saddened old wisdom, do I get enticed by catalogue descriptions into ordering something which I know is almost bound to disappoint. Yet from time to time I fall. I do not regret this. If one lost the capacity of falling, it would mean that one had passed from the trustful … Continue reading Bugbane: The Angel Of The *Fall*
In Themes Of War…
Preparing One's Garden For Winter
Porcelain Berry Bright…
Another vine which is giving me great pleasure at the moment is Vitis heterophylla, an East Asian. You can't eat it, but you can pick it and put it in a little glass on your table, where its curiously coloured berries and deeply cut leaves look oddly artificial, more like a spray designed by a … Continue reading Porcelain Berry Bright…
Morning Glory: A Warning
Meanwhile we surround a huge black Chinese jar with the blue Oxypetalum and the blue plumbago all through the summer, and drop a pot full of morning glory, Heavenly Blue, into the Chinese jar, to pour downwards into a symphony of different blues. -Vita Sackville-West A Joy of Gardening; 1958 I missed writing a post … Continue reading Morning Glory: A Warning
Dahlia: A Nuisance
...a dahlia is a nuisance, because its tubers have to be lifted in autumn, stored in a frost-proof place, started into growth under glass in April, and planted out again at the end of May. -Vita Sackville-West A Joy of Gardening; 1958 I had no idea what a dahlia was when my husband brought home a … Continue reading Dahlia: A Nuisance
Vita’s Wish For Nasturtium…
What about Tropaeolum speciosum, the flame nasturtium, with brilliant red trumpets among the small dark leaves? This is the glory of Scottish gardens... -Vita Sackville-West In Your Garden November 24, 1946 Something rather peculiar happened when I was planning my garden back in April. I knew I wanted to plant seeds, two in particular; the … Continue reading Vita’s Wish For Nasturtium…










