Bluebell Cottage Gardens and Nursery

This is one of those rare brief-and-to-the-point blogposts, totally lacking in any attempt at fine language and evocative descriptions. Basically, it's a list of all the plants on the display a...

http://lodgelanenursery.blogspot.com/2015/05/plant-list-for-malvern-show.html

I don't suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder, not clinically, anyway. But I can't deny the brightening effect that a spell of warm sunshine has on my mood. In early March I become a crashing w...

http://lodgelanenursery.blogspot.com/2015/03/here-we-go-again.html

In October my world is strewn with brown paper bags full of freshly collected seeds, rustling like oversized autumn leaves. The bags, with their turned over tops and black marker pen plant names ...

http://lodgelanenursery.blogspot.com/2014/10/sowing-seeds-in-autumn-what-why-and-how.html

It's been a long summer of celebrations, reunions, and, for me, much reflection on events of the past thirty years or so. And as the summer slips away, this golden September has rekindled embers...

http://lodgelanenursery.blogspot.com/2014/09/august-and-everything-after.html

This year for the first time I strolled through to the entrance gates to Chelsea Flower Show early on Monday morning sporting a shiny Press Pass, courtesy of the RHS. How delightfully odd it wa...

http://lodgelanenursery.blogspot.com/2014/05/chelsea-2014-review-in-pictures.html

I can't write a blog post without good photos. And I can't take a decent photo when a persistent cold wind whistles through the garden, keeping buds closed and making sharp focus impossible. But ...

http://lodgelanenursery.blogspot.com/2014/04/and-then-it-was-spring.html

This is possibly going to be the dullest blogpost I have ever published. A small percentage of you might find it fascinating. I apologise unreservedly to everyone else. Mostly I only collect se...

http://lodgelanenursery.blogspot.com/2014/02/seeds-collected-in-garden-in-2013.html

Wednesday, 29th January 2014, mid-afternoon. Four degrees Celsius under a lowered, purplish-grey sky, not a breath of wind to stir the still-standing grasses in the square borders. It's fine enou...

http://lodgelanenursery.blogspot.com/2014/01/ginger-nuts-and-yellow-geraniums.html

So, two days, 150 or so retweets and 1000 page views later, I thought I'd update you re our campaign against the EU Plant Reproductive Material laws (see my earlier blogpost ). If you've been dip...

http://lodgelanenursery.blogspot.com/2013/11/eu-plant-proposals-update.html

I wrote this as a one page summary for Fiona Hall, Leader of the Liberal Democrat MEP's. Feedback via Jenny Woods was that she had heard from domestic gardeners, but that the impact on the nu...

http://lodgelanenursery.blogspot.com/2013/11/impact-on-small-nurseries-of-proposed.html

You may have read in the press about a proposed EU regulation which, if passed, will limit the trade in ornamental plants to only those for which a formal, detailed description has been filed, (t...

http://lodgelanenursery.blogspot.com/2013/11/a-real-threat-to-uk-nursery-industry.html

There is no bore quite so boring as a 'look where I've just been on holiday' bore. But indulge me, this once. You see, my folks want to see some holiday pictures and it's easier to put them here...

http://lodgelanenursery.blogspot.com/2013/11/november-elsewhere.html

As many of you will know, I'm an avid user of Twitter and to a lesser extent, Facebook . I think both are wonderful places to share thoughts on gardening, engage with the online gardening co...

http://lodgelanenursery.blogspot.com/2013/10/twitter-monty-gardeners-world-age-and.html

My recent blog post 'The Joy of Seeds' has been shortlisted by the RHS for their Garden Blog competition.  The winner will be chosen by public vote and you have until the 20th October to cast...

http://lodgelanenursery.blogspot.com/2013/10/rhs-gardening-blog-competition-your-vote.html

Salvia patens - will flower its socks off until the first frosts. Will survive a mild winter. If you read my last blog post you'll know that I have been harvesting seeds from the garden wit...

http://lodgelanenursery.blogspot.com/2013/10/to-sow-or-not-to-sow-that-is-question.html

August. A billowing month of hay and harvest, gathering and gluts, and this August is bountiful beyond recall. We have run out of imaginative ways to cook yellow courgettes and a dozen or more a...

http://lodgelanenursery.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-joy-of-seeds.html

We're exhibiting in the Floral Marquee again this year, hoping to crack the black art or creating a perfect display. Some exhibitors have created hundreds of displays - this will only be our thir...

http://lodgelanenursery.blogspot.com/2013/07/coming-to-rhs-tatton-show.html

Earlier this year we had a lovely write up in The Garden magazine following Roy Lancaster's visit to the garden and nursery here last May. A gorgeous little pink umbellifer was out in flower an...

http://lodgelanenursery.blogspot.com/2013/06/a-correction-and-apology.html

I know, you've been waiting weeks for a new garden blogpost, sparkling with glorious pictures of flowers in sumptuous colour and instead I give you this - a grainy shot across a rough lake under ...

http://lodgelanenursery.blogspot.com/2013/06/an-open-water-virgin-no-more.html

I appear to have temporarily lost my usual inclination to write about the garden. Perhaps it's because we're open now and in the middle of our busiest month.  I spend all day talking with visito...

http://lodgelanenursery.blogspot.com/2013/05/when-words-fail.html

Like London buses, you go months without a glimmer of publicity and then three come along at once. Last May, Roy Lancaster visited us on a glorious sunny day and his four page review of the nu...

http://lodgelanenursery.blogspot.com/2013/04/a-bit-of-media-fest.html

Just for the record, for some future date when I flick back through my blog in search of a picture and stumble across this entry, this has been the coldest spring in my lifetime. A few patch...

http://lodgelanenursery.blogspot.com/2013/04/april-come-she-will.html

It's been a year in the making but this week our online nursery was finally launched. Should you decide to buy some of our lovingly nurtured plants, grown without artificial chemicals and in p...

http://lodgelanenursery.blogspot.com/2013/03/plants-online-at-last.html

If the visitor numbers to my earlier posts are anything to go by, what people really want from  a gardening blog is answers to questions about how to do things.  So, by way of a temporary susp...

http://lodgelanenursery.blogspot.com/2013/02/how-to-sow-seeds.html

BBC Two are launching a competition to find pairs of gardeners - a couple, siblings, neighbours - for a new TV competition. As I understand it it's loosely based on the Great British Bake Of...

http://lodgelanenursery.blogspot.com/2013/02/green-fingered-tv-opportunity.html