Blog Archive

Michael King

Michael’s thoughts and ideas on planting perennial plants written over the past ten years.​​

National Tulip Day 2013 It was only a week ago that I was writing about our mild winter in Holland and advising you not to miss the boat and get on with cutting back cold …

This is a timely reminder to cut back cold season grasses in late winter just before they start in to new growth. Normally, I would do this in February in Amsterdam, but this winter it …

I dreamed of my own greenhouse long before I had it and in the beginning I grew lots of annuals in spring, failed to grow tomatoes in the summer and stored pot plants there in …

Is garden design in a rut created by the way we are taught to approach it? Perhaps it is the result of the scale of modern-day gardens that we think in terms of boundaries and …

There is a small perennial border in the centre of my garden where for many years I grew a random mixture of plants – all interesting, but as a whole chaotic. Finally, I have decided …

Perennials are by their very nature loose and informal especially when combined into contemporary naturalistic planting schemes. The traditional herbaceous border was created as a tableaux to be viewed from outside and was given structure …