Gardening
Gardening’s bad girl: the genius – and malice – of Ellen Willmott
In October 1897, the grandees of the Royal Horticultural Society gathered to bestow their highest award, the Victoria Medal of…
Earthly paradises: the best of the year’s gardening books
Important historic gardens fall into two main categories: those made by one person, whose vision has been carefully preserved down…
Fortifying snapshot of the gardener’s year: Saatchi Gallery's RHS Botanical Art show reviewed
Elizabeth Blackadder, who died last month at the age of 89, was probably the most distinctive botanical artist of our…
Letters: In defence of organic food
A note about manure Sir: I am afraid Matt Ridley shows a lack of understanding about agriculture in general and…
The strange death of the English garden
Real gardens are dying out
Straight lines and grandiose schemes — Napoleon the gardener
Not content with imposing his will on nations, Napoleon tried to subdue nature too, says David Crane
Sowing seeds of comfort
If you had asked me a year ago how a pandemic-panicked world of stockpiles, curfews and social isolation would influence…
Defund theatres – and give the money to gardeners and bingo halls
Why does the state fund theatres and not gardening and bingo, asks Lloyd Evans
The best podcasts for all your corona-gardening needs
The American diet was probably at its healthiest in the second world war. Fearing interruption to supply chains, Washington launched…
Gardening is the great panacea
Viewed from a purely private garden perspective, this has been a ver mirabilis. The blossom has been wonderful and long-lasting,…
Letters: The joy of balconies
The closing of churches Sir: Stephen Hazell-Smith is quite right in writing that churches should re-open (Letters, 18 April), however…
The charm – and artifice – of the English cottage garden
The confusion is understandable. You arrive at Anne Hathaway’s Cottage in Stratford-upon-Avon, keen to experience the quintessential cottage garden —…
Everything under the sun: The glory of garden centres
Don’t you just love garden centres? You have to be mad to go on a sunny Sunday morning in the…
The magic of the Chelsea Flower Show
Chelsea, the most famous flower show in the world, pulled in its devotees once more this week, with its accustomed…
Letters: Of course Brexit is David Cameron’s fault
All Cameron’s fault Sir: In this time of febrile political speculation, there can have been few more arresting subject headings…
Why the National Garden Scheme beats the Chelsea Flower Show hands down
What could be more British than nosying around someone else’s private property while munching on a slice of cake? The…
It’s the Year of the Slug and I’m at war with the slimy little bastards
I know some people are fretting about Brexit, and others about the drive-by violence the President is doing to the…
The real stars of Kew’s newly restored Temperate House
The glasshouses at Kew Gardens are so popular that they can be quite unbearably busy at weekends. And why shouldn’t…
Two enquiring minds
Samuel Pepys, wrote John Evelyn, was ‘universally beloved, hospitable, generous, learned in many things’ and ‘skilled in music’. John Evelyn,…
Making friends with the axeman next door
What happened when I tried American neighbourliness in London
It started with a cardboard box: discovering the joys of indoor gardening
A year or so ago, I inherited a cardboard box filled with plants. It was an offshoot from an enormous…
Renzo Piano’s new Whitney Museum is very good news - for the Met
About six years ago the first section of the now celebrated High Line was opened in New York and made…
A Little Chaos review: Kate Winslet emotes her little socks off
A Little Chaos is a period drama directed by Alan Rickman and starring Kate Winslet as a woman charged to…
Why would someone pay hundreds of pounds for one snowdrop bulb? I think I know
The roots of snowdrop fever
Vita in her ivory tower: a portrait of a lonely, lovelorn aristocrat who yearned to be mistress of her own ancestral home
Visitors to the National Trust’s Sissinghurst — the decayed Elizabethan castle transformed by Vita Sackville-West in the early 1930s —…
