The latest from Carol's beautiful cottage garden… plus her diary for the week!

Amateur botanist John Bradby Blake and his collaborators never completed their illustrated record of Chinese flora, but they still stoked Britain’s passion for the Asian country’s plants

Thinking ahead to a good crop of aubergines, ...

For impossibly beautiful flowers that open in the depths of winter, look no further than the many astonishing forms of Camellia japonica , writes Charles Quest-Ritson

It’s out with winter blues and in with the blossoming prunus, unless it happens to be English pottery. Lucien de Guise finds out what Coalport brought to the tableware

Kari-Astri Davies considers a pair of double-flowered, golden-hued plants treasured by a 17th century botanist