Garden Articles 2003

Garden articles from 2003 are a little thin on the ground, but 2003 was a pretty peculiar year. The Moosey Garden was on hold - my garden writing represents the lull before the storm. Perhaps I thought I'd said it all before?

Taming Teenage Shrubs...
Mon 14th Jul 2003

I'm not very good with shrubs. There's no excuse, either - I've got lots of good books about them. I know all the rules - prune them immediately after flowering, mulch them, don't be seduced into planting them just for their flowers...

Pink Roses...
Fri 28th Feb 2003

There are so many different shades of pink. I wonder if pink-haters actually know this, for I suspect they over-simplify things. They only need to peep in a rose catalogue to see the true colour situation...

Orange...
Thu 9th Jan 2003

Oranges, grapefruit, tangerines - all these sweet citrus fruits whose colours have the extraordinary effects on gardeners. Some hate the colour orange in the garden, and won't use it. They'll carefully cut off offending orange Canna blooms.

Water under the Bridge...
Sun 5th Jan 2003

I've just spent an hour sloshing up and down the water race, picking up stones from the bottom. It's midsummer, I'm on holiday, and I'm very happy...

Colonial Gardening...
Thu 2nd Jan 2003

The other week one of my British gardening friends (Vic in Sussex) asked me to write a small piece about gardening in New Zealand. Seems an easy enough thing to do, but there's a small matter of the colonial inferiority complex.