31 May : Plant Sale

Five things to love about the plant sale at the village hall :

Trestle tables covered with plants at bargain prices. A smiling lady in a vibrant floral top, a bouquet of pinks, oranges and yellows. Delicious homemade cakes and tea in pale blue china teacups with saucers. The man selling raffle tickets who looked at my purchases and said "That foxglove comes from a garden with pure white violets and there are some growing in your pot." Filling the car boot with sunshine from Devon to take back home.

28 May : Rain

It's chucking it down. On the bright side it is a relief to know that at home the precious lupins will not be thirsty. Here in Devon the important guests are tucked up on the sofa underneath rugs with a cosy fire crackling away and a trash film and, in the kitchen, some unexpected time for me to think and plan. My head is full of planting schemes for autumn, books to read, gardens to visit. It's a good feeling.

Marsh Marigolds in the Chelsea Physic Garden

27 May : Chives

I don't grow vegetables but sometimes I wish that I had room to do so. In my mind's eye I can see the bean canes neatly tied, parallel rows of seedlings, colourful arrangements of salad leaves, carefully netted fruit bushes. My heart believes I could do these things, my head knows that it is unlikely but I will definitely have a chive border one day. Oh yes.

Garden at Cowslip Workshops, Launceston.

26 May : Cranesbills

The cottage garden is filled with geraniums which have grown undisturbed for many years and now form soft mounds under the birch tree. I particularly love this white one with feathery leaves and will take a small clump back home to plant under the hawthorn tree. Unfortunately, in an attempt to find out which variety it is, I have stumbled across a specialist nursery for hardy geraniums. I had better go and hide my credit card.

Cranesbill Nursery

25 May : Gifts

This lovely rose, a gift from Abi two years ago, is captured mid move from the trough outside my back door to its new home beside the hawthorn tree. I will let it grow to a large bush because it looks almost like a wild rose - just the thing for a woodland border. In other news the plants that my neighbour Lucille gave me are also in the border. She assures me that they are hollyhocks grown from seed but they look suspiciously like foxgloves to me.

24 May : British Library

There are strawberries in those massive planters. I wonder if the fruit gets eaten by hungry students or if everyone is very polite and leaves the fruit there. I would like to steal the idea but my pot-mania has reached excessive proportions and there is No More Room.

23 May : Garden Wisdom

Garden Wisdom
compiled by Leslie Geddes-Brown
illustrations by Angie Lewin

I saw this book in the gift shop of the Watts Gallery when we were buying entrance tickets and then spent the next hour worrying that someone else would buy it before I returned. They didn't and it is just as well because this is the book that I would take to my desert island. The most delightful selection of writings about gardening, each snippet thought provoking and making me want to read more by that writer, interspersed with delicious illustrations by Angie Lewin. I wish now that I had bought two copies so that I could have one to read and one for best. What? Don't you do that? 

22 May : Boule de Neige

It was Boule de Neige that won the Premier Rose award in the end. I am glad of it. Such a perfect rose - a meringue confection of ivory petals with a old fashioned scent that makes me feel lightheaded. I think if I could only have one rose on my desert island it would be this one.

20 May : Fragrance

Apparently I am super-sensitive to the smell of vanilla. I did not know this about myself. These Nemesia Wisley Vanilla have charming cream buds which fade to white flowers with a pale lemon centre. Unfortunately, they also have a very strong vanilla scent that drifts down the path and gets trapped by the front door. If the window is open the whole house smells as though I have one of those electric fragrance plugs. What am I to do? I fear that they may have to be banished to the end of the garden.  They catch the late afternoon sun so willingly that I feel ashamed of myself.  

19 May : Buttercups

Long tunnels of watery green beech trees, towering pyramids of horse chestnut candles, huge banks of creamy hawthorn blossom and billowing froth of cow parsley, spiky white wild garlic and the soft carpet of blue bells, bold yellow slicks of rape fields against the hot sky and the glimmer of buttercups. This is England in May - I would not want to live anywhere else.