How to cut your grass the GREEN way my friends!  Wanna get a tandem for my two lads. Beats the nintendo any day, not that they have one!

Acer sempervirens

A wee gem , and a toughie too considering it comes for Crete, higher up though, after about ten years mine has produced the wholly sum of two seeds this year, please do not let those pesky mice or birds (or chickens) get them, I really want to wait till they are ready and then sow them! 
Eight feet high so far and the interior leaves are evergreen in case you are confused by the genus name. 
This would be a great bonsai subject. 
Perhaps I should try some hardwood cuttings but do not expect a roaring success with this method, it is after all an Acer and as with most Acers they insist on doing things their own way!

One of Acer griseum, a true classic, another of the masterly Mr Ernest Wilson collections

Good to be back

Ah been a while.... too long.
Recently been working on arboricultural related material as I am going to take my arborists exam soon.  This is an area that, yet again, I was inspired to follow by my fathers enthusiasm and knowledge of all things tree related.
Lets just give a mention to some stars of the small garden like the indispensable Acers like A. griseum, A. nikoense and A. triflorum: the tripe crown of the trifoliate group. must check on their status in this group, have those pesky taxonomists been up to more tricks!

Back for more, it seems this week lots of new flushing of subjects like Hepatica transillvanica and many of the dwarf willows like Salix repens 'Iona' which is now a personal favourite and rivals S. x boydii in my book, man I love the dwarf willows.
Thanks to all the volunteers at the recent brilliant Western Winter Study Weekend in Sidney,BC it was great to meet some new gardeners and thanks for supporting a small local nurseryman like myself, it means a lot.
Fritillaria pudica above is now living up to its latin name and being bashful in the alpine house!

Primula scotica and Taxus

1. Taxus baccata 'Amersfoort'

Been a while

It's been a while since my last entry so a wee update here. I have really been enjoying doing my gardening presentations this year and a recent one took me up to the wonderful Comox Valley where I had the pleasure of staying with Leslie and John after the meeting. It was one of those not so common situations where you meet two very keen gardeners who both have a keen eye for a good plant but also know where to place it in the garden, many collectors of plants have a slight weakness in the design aspects, including myself, (although I often plant a bed with the desire to obtain stock plants so will treat the bed as a collection of mother plants rather than a intricately designed system) John rules in the back garden, the Duchess of Dirt in the front and this amicable arrangement seems to work brilliantly. Thank you to you both for your wonderful hospitality and thank you Comox Horticultural Society for a great evening.
At the moment I now seem to have more of a range of conifers than I have ever had and finally I have my hands on a favourite Ginkgo biloba 'Troll'. I have seen this one in the ground and appears to be a dwarf with a spreading low habit. I probably have around five cultivars of Ginkgo now. I am pleased to finally have saleable plants of the Taxus that thinks it is a Podocarpus: Taxus baccata 'Amersfoort' which was originally discovered in a Dutch Psychiatric Hospital.
More later.
Doing the presentations allows me to provide some teaching and I always learn something from the club members.