Blooms in garden

Late summer’s standing ovation

Spring’s got a reputation for being the apex of a garden’s beauty. The idea is that once those darling buds have popped, it’s downhill from then on. I blame it partly on Wordsworth who wrote about stumbling upon ten thousand yellow daffodils thus sealing the fates of a generation who, as schoolchildren, were programmed to…

Globe thistle: A world of beauty in one small globe

Globe thistle (Echinops sphaerocephalus) shares its name with a cuter-than-cute hedgehog from Madagascar (Echinops telfairi) because of their uncanny resemblance but, by the light of a recent super moon, I thought the plant looked very nearly like a teeny, tiny exploding planet. Almost, but not quite. Planetary explosions must be massively messy and the head of a globe thistle has to…