John Warrington

A very happy Christmas to all my readers. There are many shrubs that are pruned with shears.

Life and work in the garden rotates with remarkable speed, and absolutely nothing seems to come round with such speed as the Christian festival of Christmas.

Mexico gave us the Aztecs, the delicious tacos and very large hats.

Solving one problem in the garden always seems to lead to another one, for our hobby is a never-ending one – joy, sorrow, frustration or anger.

There is an enormous family of plants called the Rubiaceae. It comprises certainly 400 or more genera, and many thousands of species.

The history of West Indian gardens is absolutely fascinating and the wealth of plants to be found in the region is due largely to the botanical gardens established in the middle of the 19th century.

Ornamental gourds can be very exciting plants to grow nowadays, and can result in the most amazing shapes and sizes.

The Talipot palm (Corypha umbraculifera) is one of the most extraordinary plants.

Diaries can be repetitious things and I often find that in this diary my memory tells me that I am dealing with things that I have talked about before. 

I am often asked to give an opinion on the health of a fern called Polypodium aureum popularly known as the Breadfruit fern ( because the shape of the leaves is similar to those of the Breadfruit tree). 

Begonias spend their entire lives germinating, growing, flowering, seeding and germinating in the twilight zones of the forest.

When I was at junior school we were taught about the pH scale, a scale which determines the level of acidity or alkalinity of the garden soil.

There is a plant which has been grown in Europe for over four hundred years and which I believe originated in North America.

Altitude, lack of water, poor soil and swampy conditions are all things with which the gardener is familiar, and which influence the size of the plants we have in our garden.

Year after year we are engaged in operations that we did the year before, and by doing, so we learn.

Many plants look particularly gorgeous when lit at night, especially Pennisetum purpureum, all of the palm trees, and almost all of the aroids such as philodendrons, monsteras, alocasias and bamboos.

The myrtle family, the Myrtaceae, contains many plants which we all know well.

There are quite a few fern species which are probably best described as tree ferns, for the simple reason that they have a ‘trunk.’ 

Every gardener who aspires to the name will really know his or her way round a pair of secateurs, and will, I think, automatically know that the harder you prune shrubs (particularly roses) the stronger the new growths will be.

When I was a mere lad I always had difficulty with the difference between bulbs, corms, tubers, and rhizomes.