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Be happy all your life with a garden

4:56pm Thursday 16th May 2013

There is a mid-17th century adage that says “if you would be happy for a week take wife; if you would happy for a month kill a pig; but if you would be happy all your life plant a garden” and I couldn’t agree more. Having your own garden is delight, but having a garden in mid-May is a double trillion delight, for it’s full of promise and interest. My pleasure shows in my face, weather-worn and wind-beaten though it is, with laughter lines spread over it like a map. I recommend it to all potential hedonists for gardening isn’t all work!

Double and single tulips are intoxicating

4:40pm Thursday 9th May 2013

The tulips are a little late this year, but worth the wait. Most of mine are randomly planted in oak half barrels, with blends that contain oranges, black and pinks. I have a mixture of April Triumphs and later May-flowering single lates, doubles and very ornate parrots. These should give me four weeks of sock-it-to you colour, if the weather behaves. I’m growing several that I adore and tend to reorder year after year, but others are new experiments. My regulars include ‘Cairo’ which is apparently the colour of burnished Saharan sand at sunset and sadly the nearest I will probably ever get to to the Sahara. ‘Cairo’ should flower in late-April in most years and it develops an almost metallic sheen as it ages. I am also growing ‘Orange Emperor’, a fresh vision of orange and green that flowers early on. This is quite perennial when planted in borders. Finally I always grow the very warm-orange single early called ‘Prinses Irene’ for its purple flaming because this highlights pinks and purples really well. I have added a similar parrot form, named ‘Irene Parrot’, and ‘Couleur Cardinal’, a shorter red. The latter produced ‘Prinses Irene’ as a sport, or genetic mutation. I am also entirely confident that my ‘Black Hero’, a double form of ‘Queen of the Night’, will do well with its sultry, artichoke-shaped flowers that last forever.

Beautiful lanterns can kill

1:27pm Monday 1st October 2012

The ghostly shape of Chinese lanterns floating serenely through the twilight has become an increasingly common sight in the UK’s skies.

Wills to help wildlife

12:15pm Thursday 13th September 2012

Philippa Lyons, chief executive of BBOWT, says a few words can be vital

Farmoor to open eyes to wildlife

12:04pm Thursday 13th September 2012

Many of you will know Farmoor Reservoir as a major county stopping-off point for migrating birds. Probably fewer people know that it’s also an important inland gull roost and the western perimeter has an enhanced environment of scrapes, bird seed strips and herbage that has been specially planted to attract and harbour all forms of wildlife.

Winners and losers in wet summer

9:00am Thursday 16th August 2012

COLIN WILLIAMS, of the Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Wildlife Trust, checks survey results to assess the effect of this year’s weather on wildlife

Urgent action needed to save seas

8:00am Thursday 9th August 2012

Erin Murton realises there is much more to the sea than grey waves and hungry gulls

Get out and go wild

8:00am Thursday 26th July 2012

Intrepid wildlife explorer Steve Backshall is just at home hunting for beetles and frogs in a nature reserve in Didcot as he is tracking tigers in Nepal; and Sutton Courtenay Environmental Education Centre is exactly where dozens of children found their wildlife hero last week.

Warblers face worries in the wet

7:00am Thursday 26th July 2012

Warblers have been a topic of conversation among birding folk in Oxfordshire recently who have noticed a depletion of numbers with the once common willow warbler now markedly reduced and even the most common of the warblers the chiffchaff not as abundant as it once was.

Try a little orange

4:02pm Thursday 19th July 2012

The late and great Christopher Lloyd, of Great Dixter in East Sussex, used to say he wanted to make his garden exciting from the moment he left the front door.

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