John Warrington

There are many kinds of plants which produce dwarf forms naturally due to things like altitude, lack of water, poor soil and swampy conditions. 

The rains can be very welcome to the gardener, but large trees can have very serious problems when they have to carry enormous weights of water on their limbs and leaves during the rainy season.

Everyone will have come across the term ‘old crock’; it is generally applied in a disparaging way to a variety of conditions.

Nearly everyone knows the eucalyptus, the clove, the Australian bottle brush, the myrtle and the guava.

Believe it or not the rain forests of the Amazon basin can be very dry places. 

The most frequently asked questions about pests and diseases are ‘What is it?’;

Well over a century ago the British Admiralty required all naval vessels to carry stocks of limes as part of the food intake for sailors to prevent them suffering from scurvy, a nasty horrible disease related to Vitamin C deficiency which could immobilise an entire ship’s company. It

There is nothing sillier than sticking a handful of leaves into your mouth and setting fire to them.

The ixora is one of the most popular of flowering shrubs of the tropics, and in particular the dwarf forms which have gained enormously in popularity in the last twenty years or so, as their potential for use in the sunny hot spots in the garden have been realised.

The maze was very popular in the UK five hundred years ago. 

You have to knock a plant out of its pot to see if it needs moving to a larger container. 

A Gardener’s Diary An old friend of mine grew the most glorious, flawless chrysanthemums for over twenty years at Kew Gardens.

Visitors to our gardens include birds and small mammals which make their homes with us. 

A Gardener’s Diary Gardeners in present day Britain are experiencing a fairly new phenomenon: a preoccupation with size which has got to competition level.

I was interested to read that gardeners throughout Britain are being urged to collect and save trimmings of their yew trees (Taxus baccata) for processing into the anti-cancer drug, Taxol.

A Gardener’s Diary I expect everyone reading this column will be familiar with mistletoe. 

A Gardener’s Diary A few words about climbers, an invaluable group of plants which can cover up anything unsightly like concrete, soften the most angular of structures,  and  raise the general level of flowering plants in the garden.  The

A Gardener’s Diary I suppose that introducing the subject of worms just after breakfast on a Sunday morning is not quite the done thing, but the interesting thing is that they are very garden friendly. 

A Gardener’s Diary At this time of the year one is quite anxious about trying to get one’s hands on particularly choice plants now coming onto the market.

The laboratory is replacing the potting shed Over the past few weeks I have dealt with some aspect of the propagation of plants, and it’s  obvious to me that there is no part of a plant which cannot be utilized for propagation, for the simple reason that every living cell possesses the genetic information of its parents.