Frost will pick out the shapes of the sea hollies, the wind will tatter them and in spring when I’m gardening I will find the lacy and beautiful skeletons of their bracts. However, even though there’s little evidence for this tale, it's stuck (after all it is a good story). Unfortunately, with the current Brexit situation, we are unable to deliver to Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Looking out at the garden, through the kitchen window, the shrub roses are still, in mid-October, blooming in the beds.

Apparently, its generally thought that in Falstaff's line in Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor , where he runs off for an assignation with Mistress Ford ". It spends it's time everywhere and as a result spends less time in her gardens than I would have liked. As an adult she became recognised as one of the country’s greatest horticulturalists, with three spectacular homes and gardens — Warley Place in England, Tresserve near Aix-les-Bains in France and Villa Boccanegra in Italy.We are given a possible reason for her absence from the RHS medal ceremony that so shocked the Victorian gardening press. The ghostly coloring and the sculptural quality of this plant suggest placement in a position of prominence. It was said that she always kept the seeds of this tall spikey thistle in her handbag (together with a pistol and a knuckle duster) and would surreptitiously scatter them around when her hosts were not looking, just to sabotage their horticultural efforts.

These binoculars are not in the first flush of youth – or at least their once-sturdy, red velvet-lined case isn’t. Apparently, the candied sweet was much sought after for coughs and colds - and as an aphrodisiac (what wasn't? The plant’s commonly used name refers to Miss Willmott’s alleged habit – probably later in life when she was herself considered to be somewhat eccentric and prickly, of carrying seeds of it in her pockets, and scattering them around the gardens of her fellow horticulturists where they would later pop up uninvited - a ghostly reminder of her visit.With so many characters and relationships described, I was confused with the author's ever changing names for subjects, switching between formal and informal names at random. By early afternoon, the dark shade that hid in corners and under bushes during summer emerges with preternatural speed and subjugates the garden. In year two (or three: in my short-season climate, it tends to act as a triennial), the flowers will go to seed, drop to the ground and take care of planting themselves. Or perhaps for her book, ‘The Genus Rosa’, published at great personal expense in four volumes between 1910 and 1914.