Apples hate strong wind and damp, cold soil so try and place them on well-drained, rich soil in a sheltered position.
— Monty Don
You get older, you slow down. Failure feels like less of a humiliation and more of a balanced return.
Blackthorn has wicked spikes that are highly brittle and tend to snap off under the skin and then fester horribly. This means that they can only really be part of a hedge that you do not want to get too close to.
I have always felt that the best gardens aspired to coppice and that the best woods have all the elements of the very best gardens.
Some plants become weeds simply by virtue of their success rather than any other factor. You merely want less of them.
For every gardener there is a minimum level of engagement that is needed to sustain and develop the relationship. There is no magic figure to this and it will vary from person to person and season to season, but it is there.
Gardening is inevitably a process of constant, remorseless change. It is the constancy of that process that is so comforting, not any fixed moment.
The Romans brought with them spices such as ginger, pepper and cinnamon, and herbs including borage, chervil, dill, fennel, lovage, sage and thyme, all of which have remained staples of the British kitchen.
Pulmonarias need splitting every two or three years, as they rapidly develop into a doughnut with an empty centre that quickly gets filled with weeds.
Ground elder, introduced by the Romans as a vegetable, is difficult to get rid of because it regrows from the smallest trace of root.
We undervalue food in this country, yet Britain has beautiful food and beautiful growing conditions. It is astonishing the range we can grow.
The key to our oldest woodland is that it has been cut down and regrown, in some cases as often as 50 or 60 times. It is one of the most perfectly sustainable resources and ecosystems known to man.
I myself did not officially become organic until 1997, although I was always hopeless at using chemicals.
A column is a curiously intimate affair. For a start, you know by default that you will have regular readers, so it gives the writer the privilege of continuing a running conversation with them.
When you're 15 whatever your parents tell you you should do, you're not going to do it.
People are increasingly realising that what they eat is important. You can't put junk food in your body and be healthy. All sorts of problems can develop, like diabetes, heart disease, obesity, strokes. Gardening not only helps with exercise and mental health, but it can improve diet as well.
Earth heals me better than any medicine.
No apple is reliably self-fertile, so each tree needs a pollinator. A neighbour may well have an apple that will do that for you, but it is better to always plant at least two trees to be certain of pollination.
The truth is that wreaths have never really been part of my creative life. I like them and want them and know how to do them.
My favourite thorn belongs to the rose with a name like a mouthful of broken teeth, Rosa sericea pteracantha. It is grown almost entirely for its astonishing ruby-red shark's fin thorns that are at their lapidary best in early summer, especially when backlit by a low setting sun.
Modern man has a very abstract idea of what a wood is. I guess that if you stopped anyone on the street and asked them what a wood actually was, they would see it as a place where big trees grow.
Once you engage with the simple enough business of feeding yourself, of soil and water, weather, season and harvest, it becomes personal. It is about you, your family and friends. Food becomes an aspect of those relationships as well as your intimacy with your plot.
I use the period between Christmas and New Year to potter about, think and completely change my mindset. In that easy no-man's-land between Boxing Day and New Year, loins are girded and mettle readied. It is time, as we voyagers bid farewell to the old year, to fare forward.
The divide between a 'wild' plant and what is suitable for the garden is unnatural and meaningless. Gardens begin and end in the mind, and the Western way of thinking is not good at accommodating that.
Any British household with a scrap of land has always grown herbs for the kitchen. From the superb monastic herb gardens down to the humblest cottage, a supply of fresh herbs would have been considered essential.
Daffodils, blossom and tulips jostle to the front of the stage in April. I love these early perennials: they may be more modest but they nearly all have that one special quality that a plant needs to transform your affections from admiration to affection - charm.
I have learnt that gardens are like happiness: you cannot pursue them as an absolute thing or moment.
I have been growing vegetables since I was a boy. When I was about 17 I was the only one of five children living at home. My parents were ill and I took over the vegetable garden and I have had one ever since.
Trees are complicated, fascinating things, usually older and more beautiful than any of us.
A weekly column is not always a treat. It can be a tyranny. There are times when I have very little to say. There are times, every year, when I am weighed down with depression. At these times it takes days of slog to force the words on to the page.
I do wear gloves for things that sting a lot or prick a lot. But I just like to feel with my hands. I find gloves cumbersome and uncomfortable and I've got tough old hands so the old cut doesn't matter.
I think we put far too much interest in trying to get ten to 20 year olds interested in gardening. I think you should do everything you can to try and get them interested up to the age of 10.
I love high summer as well, but nothing beats a perfect May morning.
We know that gardening is good for you. It is fantastic, all-round exercise.
As September rolls into October, I become obsessed with apples. Now obviously this is provoked by the ripening fruit clustering on the trees in our orchard, but it is as though all things pomological ripen in me, too.
I think that the essence of a Christmas wreath - of all Christmas vegetative decoration - has to be green and, if possible, living. So the basis of a wreath is ideally holly, laurel, ivy, rosemary, larch, fir or whatever is to hand.
Coppice management depends upon the chosen tree being cut when the shoots are straight, vigorous and, critically, not shading out new growth.
A healthy plant is one that adapts best to the situation in which it finds itself. There is no objective measure of this.
Many gardens are hijacked by their plants and end up looking like a room overstuffed with furniture.
Sweet peas should smell. Half the point of growing sweet peas is to cut them for the house; they should fill a room with an almost painful olfactory inarticulateness. But most sweet peas smell of nothing. This does not stop them being beautiful, but they are like food with no flavour.
Chickweed is regarded by most gardeners as just that - a weed - but is excellent in sandwiches or salads.
A plant I have grown for years without really taking much notice of is epimedium. You know how it is: someone gives you a plant, you stick it in the ground and somehow it never presses the trigger. There is no intimacy.
Bamboos can go from shining health to shabbiness in weeks. The problem is too much wind, too little water and tired compost.
The horticultural industry is unimaginative and dominated by vast, supermarket-like outlets. But the small nurseries and growers remain - praise them with your wallets, not your memories.
The more people share woodland, absorb it and regard it as part of their personal heritage and culture, the richer our society will be. The more people can work in woods and use them practically rather than go through the motions as a kind of ersatz exercise, the more they will care for the places themselves rather than the political idea of them.
Woods are rich with biodiversity and, above all, places of trees and light that spangles a thousand greens through the leaves.
You would be surprised at how many letters I get criticising me for straying outside the strict limitations of horticulture or even for expressing what is clearly an opinion.
I just think that gardening is about the future, a slow thing, that is deep and spiritual as well as spiritually rewarding.
I think that's my strength, that I am an amateur gardener who loves gardening. I've read about it, I've written about it, I've done it all my life but at heart, I'm just a passionate amateur gardener.
There is a direct correlation between gardening and mental health, not just to maintain good mental health but to repair it as well - that's anything in the gamut from depression to serious brain damage, schizophrenia or autism.
