the stylish gardening blog

Category Page

shrubs Homeshrubs

A plant to love: Daphne mezereum

February 15, 2010
by F&F
Role
No Responses.
Image by Didier Bier Daphne is another winter-flowering shrub that smells yummy scrummy. And it looks gorgeous as well, bringing lovely warm purple flowers into your garden when everything else hasn’t even started waking up.
Read More

A plant to love: Viburnum x bodnantense ‘Dawn’

January 23, 2010
by F&F
Role
No Responses.
Image by Anne Tanne The woman who planned my childhood garden was one of the best designers I ever encountered. There are too many clever things she did to list here, but one of my favourites was the Viburnum x bodnantense ‘Dawn’ that she planted by
Read More

A plant to love: Witch Hazel

January 14, 2010
by F&F
Role
No Responses.
Image by Tanaka Juuyoh. It is very easy at this time of year to let things go. The garden never seems very friendly, and everything looks so depressed and bare. In fact, January is one of those months which shouldn’t exist, as it really is miserable.
Read More

A plant to love

January 10, 2010
by F&F
Role
No Responses.
Image by Danny Christmas box (Sarcococca confusa) isn’t really a showstopper when you first meet it. In fact, you could be forgiven for thinking it a little dull. It looks just like a low-growing, reliable evergreen. But appearances are deceptive bec
Read More

A plant to love: Winter Sweet

January 8, 2010
by F&F
Role
No Responses.
Image by Koizumi I’ll let you into a secret: quite a few of the Six Plants to Love for this month smell pretty epic. But if you lined them up before a panel of perfumers, Winter Sweet (Chimonanthus praecox) would have the judges fawning and fighting
Read More

Beauty berry

November 12, 2009
by F&F
No Responses.
Beauty Berry (Callicarpa bodinieri var.giraldii ‘Profusion’) may be an Autumn shrub, but there’s very little mellow fruitfulness about it. In fact, ‘mellow’ is entirely the wrong adjective to use when discussing Beauty Berries. Their fruits aren’t su
Read More

Holy smoke!

November 1, 2009
by F&F
No Responses.
The first frosts are hanging back this year, like a child hiding behind his mother’s skirts. While this means my parsnips are still hiding in the ground, it is blessing us with a prolonged display of autumn colour. And what a display there is. Among
Read More

Buddleia x weyeriana ‘Sungold’

July 10, 2009
by F&F
Role
No Responses.
One of the things I really adore about Buddleia x weyeriana is that the globose blooms look like scoops of thick, rich cornish ice cream. You can’t actually eat these flowers, but they really are irresistible, especially for bees.
Read More

Clean as a rose

May 15, 2009
by F&F
Role
No Responses.
Their heads are hanging low with raindrops, but my ‘Ena Harkness’ rose is flowering. I planted it in the raised bed in the autumn, and gave it a jolly good dollop of well-rotted horse manure. This is a climbing rose, so I am gently training it up the
Read More