This year perhaps more than most and certainly a massive change from last year, things are stirring in the wilderness. Snowdrops made an early start and the RHS garden in Rosemoor, Devon was awash with a sea of white - not snow this year but the delicate blooms of the snowdrop.

Snowdrops - Galanthus in flower early January 2012

So too have many other plants put in an early appearance. Hellebores too are showing strongly with their sometimes bright

Hellebore breaking bud

sometimes classy blooms

Hellebore breaking bud

These are well worth taking a closer look at. Normally all we see is the hanging bell shape of the flower but take time to upturn these flowers to study the intricate patterns and colours within.

Hellebore in flower

Hellebore in flower

Hellebore in flower

A couple of real surprises hit me this week though – in a garden not known for its warm micro-climate I found a couple of crocus putting in an appearance

Crocus coming in to bloom January 2012

Crocus coming in to bloom January 2012

and a periwinkle Vinca major ‘Variegata’ actually in flower!

Vinca major 'Variegata'

The continuing warm weather will no doubt see other plants eager to show that they can match the others – any late cold snaps though could potentially be quite damaging as plants put on fresh new growth that isn’t sufficiently hardened off.

Take a look around you – I think you will find that there is plenty going on in the garden, so don’t just sit and wait for the daffodils to appear take a look at what is already brightening up your garden this winter.

All photos Tim Matcham

As our summer retreats it is a great time to get your thinking hat on about what you want to achieve in the garden for next year. Does your garden have a structure that will give it form throughout the winter? Evergreen shrubs, climbers and perennial grasses can help with this. Hardy shrubs like Lonicera x purpusii ’Winter Beauty’ and the evergreen Sarcococca confusa start to stake their claim and fill the winter garden with sweet scent.

Have you made provision for harbouring native wildlife through the winter months, encouraging beneficial insects and creatures to the garden by leaving some of the leaves under hedges or shrubs, creating log piles for creatures to take refuge. All these things will help the garden when it re-awakes in spring. Cotoneaster ’Hybridus Pendulus’ and other cotoneaster are smothered with bright red berries that carry well on in to the winter months and will help birds as the weather gets colder.

Winter months have different priorities in the garden but do beware about making it look too tidy even if you have had it designed to look sharp and functional during summer months. While clearing some leaves recently it was noticeable how worms had started taking the leaves down in to the soil – great work for aeration and enriching the earth – the trick is not to leave too many or it will have a detrimental effect.

Planning your garden so that it is a benefit and a pleasure all year round does require action and knowledge and you will find it beneficial to talk to a garden designer about how best to make use of your space so that it meets your requirements. it needn’t  be a gloomy place just because very little is in flower. Getting the structure right adds longevity to the value of your garden.

Start working on it now – then you can enjoy it next year, any later and you may miss out!

Top Tip: Use a blower not a rake for clearing leaves – any leaves that worms have started to take down will be left and the ground will be less damaged.

Salvia nemorosa 'Caradonna'

A longstanding client reluctantly gave in to having their border reworked last year. I knew from the start that the change was going to be dramatic. Out came some very tired old shrubs that were seriously under performing and gave the garden the air of a side ally to a supermarket car park – truly inspiring! We discussed what their preferences were in terms of colour, texture, form and of course maintenance. They wanted a border that changed and developed as the year went on and that gave them something to get excited about. Something to show off to family and friends who frequently visited. Above all something they could enjoy and derive pleasure from whilst attracting bees and butterflies to add to the ecological mix.

Monarda & Delphinium

This year sees the first year of that new border. Every week I am greeted by the client who takes pride in showing me the new flowers that have blossomed since my previous visit. And every week the same comment – why didn’t we do this sooner! This is something I have got used to hearing from all of my clients. Why ever didn’t we do this before? What was stopping them?

Echinacea purpurea in bud

Helping clients get the most out of their garden is a real treat for me and I would love to help you too. Re working a border isn’t as scary as redesigning the whole garden but can have just as significant impact.

Cosmos - brightly coloured annual

Take a look at your garden – would it cheer you up to see some changes for the better? Feedback from my customers strongly suggests that you would – so don’t leave it any longer – we can start straight away!

Campanula 'Sarastro'

As the flower starts to form it has the appearance of a deflated airbag before opening out in to a wonderful shiny bell. It works well alongside ornamental grasses and alliums and others in a blue/purple planting scheme and is an asset to any cottage garden scheme. Cutting back the stems to the ground after flowering will encourage a second flush of flowers through to the autumn.

flowers heads look like deflated air bags before opening to their full bell shape

It grows to about 50cm (just over 2 feet in old money!) and will grow in most soils and conditions – fully hardy too, so expect to see it again next year!

valuable addition to any border

A real favourite perennial with minimal care requrements.

The gardens are at North Court in Shorwell on the Isle of Wight.

My grandparents moved there when they retired in 1964, splitting the house three ways between three brothers and their families. The garden was also apportioned and being around 14 acres in total there was plenty for everyone!

After restoring the house they set about the gardens which include a wonderful acre of Victorian walled garden. My grandfather was keen on growing fruit and vegetables and my grandmother loved her roses. They won many medals at the local Brighstone Flower Show for their exhibits over the years – contesting many of the categories with a very able gardener by the name of Bob Bucket.

The house is now owned by my grandfathers nephew and he is wildly passionate about the gardens. There are some fabulous plants in the gardens – some with interesting connections.

This Paeonia mlokosewitschii - affectionately known as Molly the Witch was given as seed to my grandmother by Vita Sackville-West (Lady Nicholson) from Sissinghurst.

It now flourishes in the borders of North Court and John Harrison kindly gave me a small root cutting to propagate on. The plant is wonderful and always seems to attract masses of bees.

Here are some of the other plants that were in bloom or looking special.

The gardens are very extensive and are frequently opened as part of the NGS Scheme – there is plenty to see!

There were also some very private moments for me when I felt the very strong presence of my Grandparents – the last time I visited here was for the funeral of my Grandmother in 1996 – so it was pretty emotional!

I hope that I have captured some of the spirit of these wonderful gardens and that it helps explain my passion for gardens and gardening – I feel very lucky and am delighted that they are in such safe hands now. I am already planning a return in the Autumn!

Though organised by Derry Watkins of Special Plants fame (who was keen to point out that her gardens were now open on Tuesdays) – who is of course american herself, Dan Hinkley drew a large audience to the Bath University Gardening Club to illustrate a talk on two Pacific North West gardens. The climate there seemed pretty similar to Britain with some oddities bought about by its coastal location.

Dan’s delivery style is easy going and effortless much as the gardens he has created and he had his audience well primed with open laughter. How can gardening be so amusing? To those that appreciate that gardens take time effort and patience to create – it is finding that by illustrating the errors made with good grace sits well with a knowledgeable audience.

Locating a water feature right outside a bedroom window – those of a certain age would appreciate this one…When told by a garden visitor that he was “lucky to have a south facing wall” in which to grow plants that required a sheltered, sunny aspect – his research concluded that no matter where you were in the world every house had a south facing wall (he had just made best use of his!) Planting Scleria secans (Razor grass) right next to an entrance door only to find guests losing their feet while walking past…The elegant mush left behind when Agapanthus succumbs to the winter frosts – how important is this to the winter garden??? Or bales of Phormium hacked down in dismay after 10 years thanks to three blindingly cold winters. Buying large rocks to place in the landscape, when two generations previously had spent their entire agricultural lives removing such monoliths from their land – surely he would have been disowned for paying to have them bought on? Yes we rocked with laughter!

Every gardener will have experienced some of these travesties and understand that you can only laugh and then learn from your findings – seeing others trip over the same hurdles gives us reassurance that we are not alone in our battle to create something special in our outdoor space. We know that when it does all come together it is really rewarding – when it doesn’t – laughter is surely the sweetest tonic!

The Viburnum group is a remarkable collection of varied plants and I often wonder whether it would be possible to design a garden that only featured Viburnum in all of its assorted guises. Viburnum tinus ‘Eve Price’ is a popular choice of many schemes but is rather prone to Viburnum beetle which quickly reduce the leaves to a rather scrappy looking lace skeleton – a problem that is duplicated in others such as the V.opulus.

Viburnum bodnantense ‘Dawn’ isn’t affected but since it flowers before the leaves are present this somehow seems less of an issue!

It flowers over the winter months on bare stems and on still days fills the air with a powerful sweet aroma that serves as a reminder that there is still active life in the garden even on the darkest days.

That said it is quite a straggly plant and doesn’t offer much after flowering has finished and although it does respond well to pruning it can also be left to it’s own devices so is ideal for the back of a border where it can be left alone and allowed to sink into obscurity in the summer months – ready to spring out and wow us again next winter.

The Home Grown Area – Fields of Gold

Why did it catch my eye? Well it was very bright and cheerful for a start!

Yes it conveyed a message but best of all it created a great opportunity for some great photos – so allow me to introduce the Sunflowers…

There were a number of different varieties and they were all swarming with bees and other beneficial insects.

What a joy!

To avoid Tulip fly - which Head Gardener Glyn Jones points out would mean no more Tulips at Hidcote for around 20 years! That’s a lot of bulbs to plant and dig up every year and they simply give them away to staff, volunteers and visitors. Each year the display is different and they work with J Parkers to supply the bulbs annually and all certificated clean stock.

Today these blooms were in full display – a day of variable weather ranging from rain to bright sunshine but always rather cooler than might have been ideal – I gather May 2010  is heading for being one of the coldest ever!

They have adopted a couple of different planting styles for the tulips and to good effect. Some borders for example in the Maple Garden Contain borders with just a single variety planted ‘en masse’ and bounded by neat Buxus hedges.

The Red Border mixes varieties and colours but still retaining bold tranches of individual varieties.

In the Pillar garden it is rather more relaxed, which contrasts well with the formality of the upright pillars and Prunus Amanagowa.

In the white garden too the Tulip planting supports the other white blooms including Dicentra spectabilis Alba.

The Old Garden sees yet another style of planting called ribbon planting where a ribbon like trail threads its way through the borders – Glyn pointed out the obvious mistake in this years planting where a rather shocking yellow variety had crept in to an otherwise orderly transition through soft pastel shades! Good to know that mistakes are not limited to our own gardens!

The display was truly stunning and set off these amazingly influential gardens superbly which,  although regarded as being quintessentially English were laid out by and American by the name of Lawrence Johnston over 100 years ago. Everywhere you turn you can see how this Arts and Crafts garden of ‘rooms’ has been influencing gardens and garden designers ever since.

My thanks to Glyn and to Alitex for organising the tour today and I look forward to returning later in the season to see how the planting that replaced the Tulips is shaping up!

Glyn’s flower of the day was actually not a Tulip at all but a beautiful blue Gentian in the newly finished Rock Bank

- the colour was mesmerising and it serves to highlight the work done by gardens like Hidcote in the role of plant hunting both when the gardens were originally laid out by both Johnston and George Forrest but also by the team today who are retracing the steps of their forebears and working with the authorities in places like China to work on preserving plant heritage and in discovering new species.

A great day out with the tulips that actually revealed more about the remarkable gardens at Hidcote.

This arrival was stranger still when one of my clients called across to me, having arrived moments before – had I really been driving for 2 hours to a wet field to talk to a client (and friend!) who is barely 5 minutes drive from home? We could have saved ourselves the trouble and had tea at home! It was great to see them and catch up on their garden, which is coming on – and I was reminded that I still owed them some plants that had been unavailable last season! That will be a great opportunity to go and see the garden again so really looking forward to that.

Tea seeemd the only sensible choice and a chance to ponder the catalogue before setting off to find others that I had promised to try and find. I am sure I could have bought an entire tea plantation for the sum I was asked for for my steaming brew - but needs must… The decision to wear warm clothes and a waterproof jacket was now totally justified and tea consumed I set off on my search.

First stop was the Garden Organic stand manned by the delightful Verity Thompson. It was good to catch up and sparked an idea for further collaboration at The Garden Network.

One of my main reasons for visiting as a Garden Designer is to look at the Show Gardens. Malvern isn’t known as a hotbed for innovation particularly but it can provide some neat glimpses at how other designers approach a garden or planting and I particularly enjoyed chatting with Deb Bird about her garden The Nature of Nurture which particularly struck a chord as I learned much of my gardening from my parents and grandparents. Perhaps one of the most interesting ideas though came in the Schools Section, where  two gardens featured greenhouses made from recycled plastic bottles.

Malvern Spring Show this year also played host the the Bloggers Meet at Malvern and it was great to meet so many people that I had only read articles by.

Huge thanks to Michelle Chapman (Veg Plotting) and Helen Johnstone (The Patient Gardener) for organising it all – great job. Biscuits were sponsored by James Alexander Sinclair (Encounters with Remarkable Biscuits)

with contributions from Yolanda (Bliss) amongst others!

It was also great to chat with Cleve West and Joe Swift who were both very generous with their time – always appreciated.

I did make it round to some of the other stands notably the Wiggly Wigglers stand in the Eco Tent where – as a blogger – we received a copy of a rather wonderful book called Bringing a Garden to Life. The day ended with a meeting with Claudia de Yong who shared some tips on sourcing products for the garden as well as agreeing to contribute content to The Garden Network on this topic, for which she is well known!

The Chris Beardshaw Scholarship was won by Maria Luisa Medina who starts an amazing journey designing gardens at both Malvern Autumn Show and culmintaing in a Chelsea Garden for 2011

The title for the gardens the seven prospective scholars was The Circus and I’ll leave you with this interesting picture of some amazing acrobats who added their performance to the proceedings!