From January through June, Matt Collins, writer and Head Gardener at the Garden Museum, will document the subtle and often overlooked scenes of a changing garden. Join us throughout the season as he reflects on the ever-changing landscape of his Hampshire plot. Read part one, part two, part three, part four, and part five here.
7 May 2025
The more I garden, the more I understand the ancient fascination with herbs – a preoccupation of early physicians, apothecaries, and herbalists. Though we may have done away with the mystical dimension that infused folkloric properties with medical weight (sixteenth century herbalist John Gerard would suggest, for example, that pulmonaria healed lung ulcers, based solely on the plant’s lung-like leaf shape), they remain a genuine wonder in the garden, combining visual, culinary, and medicinal appeal. In fact, the idea of a garden exclusively comprised of ‘herbs’ – an admittedly loose term, given that cultivated calendula, geranium, and salvia can all be considered herbs – appeals ever more.
Take the four lofty stands of bronze fennel currently mounting in this garden, with their copper, sea-green, and glaucous foliage, and a summer swathe of pale and then luminous yellow flowers. Similarly, so much can be said of the rosemary’s spring blue, and the bright umbels of dill, parsley, and coriander. Meanwhile, the prominent spikes and powerful aniseed fragrance of Agastache (anise hyssop) continue to amaze me. I would happily have a whole garden of it. This afternoon, I added three new clumps of Agastache ‘Blackadder’ for summer, as it never seems to survive the winter with me, and last year’s have not resurfaced.
8 May 2025
Habitually pulling somniferous poppies from the shingle at the back of the garden this morning, where last year’s meter-high blooms showered their fine, sand-grain seeds all over the hot stones. It’s best not to look closely, as there are thousands of seedlings, and I only wish to retain a handful. Within moments, the pulling becomes mechanical and meditative. All of a sudden, I’m thinking about the beach, about unplanned excursions, and whether we have enough eggs in the kitchen cupboard.
10 May 2025
Is there anything sweeter in the natural world than a mint moth? The size of a child’s fingernail, pink-copper on its forewings, its hinds a kind of chestnut brown, with flecks of gold uniting both. I went out into the garden in the full afternoon sun to see what invertebrates I could find, and within seconds I’d spotted this astonishing little thing on the pink cistus beside the door. It goes to show the importance of active observation.
11 May 2025
Twenty-five degrees today. Nothing meaningfully productive gets done in heat like this, not by me. Instead, I snatched moments to fiddle, tearing leaves to relieve seedlings of stunting shade and seeking gaps for the sunflowers that are now a foot high in the cold frame. I’m excited to be trying two new sunflowers this year: the intriguingly Victorian pink-frilled ‘Astra Rose’ and the lower, smaller, and multi-branching ‘Italian Green Heart’. This afternoon, I cut sturdy stakes from last year’s hazel poles and knocked them into position at the back of the sunny border, as future supports for rocketing sunflower stems.
12 May 2025
First screech of a swift heard racing over the house this morning, from the kitchen as I make breakfast. A sound that always fills me with joy. Could it be turfing out the sparrows currently occupying the swift box below our eaves?
13 May 2025
The goat willows along the lane out of the village are profuse with fruit: their floss-encased seeds drift everywhere in great masses, accumulating like cotton fluff at the roadside, on the surface of the chalk stream and beneath the hedges. They coat the abundant cow parsley with the softness of giant snowflakes, blurring their flowers into a homogenous fog of cream white.
It reminds me of the town of Haro, La Rioja, where our brief stay two summers ago coincided with the mass fruiting of poplar trees along the Ebro river – the white fluff was carried up above the town on a warm current before falling softly and evenly over the streets. It was everywhere; we walked through the little central plaza as if through a gentle snowstorm. When I think of Haro, I picture it in a snow globe.
14 May 2025
The first of the Benton irises are out in flower today: ‘Benton Deidre’ with its magenta-pink petals, golden centres, and ivory-white falls. One of a handful I have from my year gardening at Benton End in Suffolk, where they were bred by artist-plantsman Cedric Morris. It’s still potluck with these irises, some only producing flower spikes for the first time this year after three in the ground. Excited to see which Bentons arise next.
19 May 2025
Home from the frenzy of the Chelsea Flower Show opening, mind dizzy with lemon lupins, candied valerian, and the bold blue Himalayan poppies of the Great Pavilion. I went out to close the cold frame and found a clump of fumitory sprung at the back of the garden there, at the foot of the fence in the shelter of the kiwi vine. An impossibly delicate, airy, faintly glaucous plant, somewhere between a corydalis and a poppy in build. Favouring hot, disturbed soil, it goes by ‘Earth smoke’ – a gorgeous name.
I felt a tingling exhilaration at something so wild and so pretty turning up in the garden uninvited, particularly following a day steeped in precise horticultural curation. I cut a couple of stems, nodding with creamy, blotch-tipped, feathered flowers, and reached for the smallest vase on the shelf.
23 May 2025
A second Benton iris in bloom: ‘Benton Susan,’ prettier than the last; all amber, honey, and gold. The lack of rain, however, is a concern. The garden flowers bask while farmers across the country are fretting one of the driest springs in decades. The fields outside the village are the lowest I’ve ever seen them, at a time when they usually surge.
There is a ritual now, on the bright but still cool mornings, of coffee at the garden table, surrounded by flowers: the yellow poppies still going, the pots filling with blue nigella. At my back, stems of fennel billowing upwards. Bit by bit, the little garden crowds at its edges and engulfs me for the summer – it is the best and most privileged of feelings. Rewarding my brash winter prunings, the Virginia creepers have re-crept with vigour, the black elder has unfurled pink umbels the size of dinner plates, and the climbing roses are again tumbling from the wires.
Matt Collins is a garden and travel writer, and head gardener at the Garden Museum in London.
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