Today, before we venture into the garden, dear reader, we’ll have a little catharsis. Better have your hanky at the ready.

Blackbirds choose the oddest places to build their nest in, and one of ours selected the shelf of a Danish trolley in our “industrial estate” where compost, pots and trays are stored, and where…

The hungry gap yawns wide at Lea Gardens this year, as the rabbits gnawed most brassicas down to rotting stumps. These stumps, if left alone, put out an abundance of new shoots – a supply of spring greens that lasts through much of May. There’s nothing for it but to fall back on frozen supplies…

What perfect gardening weather we’ve enjoyed of late, but – dare I say it – we could do with a few nice showers, just enough to water in the newly planted seedlings and to give all the things grown in pots a good soaking.

During the spring drought the soil here either turns to dust…

Suddenly it’s all go. The snowdrops and crocuses are a distant memory and the chionodoxas are just starting to go over. Early spring is a thing of the past. April is of course daffodil month. Yellow peril everywhere. Call me a snob, but I just can’t warm to those large hybrids, especially if they’re planted…

Remember when hostas were all the rage, and whole borders were scrapped to make way for the fashionable plant of the 1980s? I still have quite a few˜Sum and Substance’,˜Hadspen Blue’,˜Frances Williams’, and of course, the inimitable˜Tallboy’ with drooping clusters of purple bells, towering above them all.

Hemerocallis, also known as day lilies because the individual…

March, I’m told, used to come in like a lion and go out like a lamb in the good old days, but has since become less obliging, preferring to indulge in leonine behaviour from first to last, rather than succumbing to mildness and meekness at the end, a quality, I’m sure, most gardeners would prefer.…

And suddenly it’s voar. Spring started a little before the vernal equinox this year – at least for the humans at Lea Gardens.

We had our first al-fresco drinks of the year (orange juice with fizzy water) on the 17th, as we sat, bare-armed on a bench, enjoying the warmth of the sun. Having spent…

It seems I’m not the only Shetland gardener disgruntled by rogue mail order nurseries. One of my readers reported receiving tiny plug plants, stuck loosely into larger pots, while another let off steam about the patronising attitude she was met with regarding an unsolicited sub­stitute. Thankfully, such experiences are still exceptions to the rule, and…

I’m frequently asked where all the plants in my garden come from, and the answer, more often than not, is: good things come in small packages.

Exchange seed from various plant societies has been top of my shop­ping list for near on three decades, but some gardeners, it seems, “have no luck with seed” and…

All successful gardening hinges on good soil preparation. When plant­ings go wrong, it is all too often bla­med on the wind and the weather.

The elements do play their role, but in the vast majority of cases the overgrown borders and abandoned rock gardens are due to a bad start in life.

Only a minority…