If gardeners are exceptional people then buy them a copy of this book for Christmas. It contains 20 stories and profiles about encounters with gardeners and a day in their life to provide reading matter for dark garden-free evenings. Amongst those...

The new Alpine House at Harlow Carr has a plunge bed to be proud of as you may expect from the RHS. This Dionysia Curviflora has been double potted to facilitate watering and it’s flowers will be purple with a white inner ring and dark centre. The...

Get out and pick your holly for Christmas decorations now. As the berries ripen the birds descend and scoff the lot just when you are not looking. You can condition the stems, leaves and berries and placing stalks in a glycerin solution. They will...

The flowering crabs, Malus Rosaceae, are excellent floral trees with the added bonus of small usually edible fruit. The Malus Red Sentinel above has a profusion of small hard red autumn fruit that can be admired in the garden, left to feed birds,...

Outside Harlow Carr’s new Alpine house are a collection of troughs, stone sinks and other containers suitable for a collection of Alpine plants. The planting varies and is related to the soil and rock conditions each plant prefers. One container has...