As my toddler explores the world mouth-first, I’m reminded that, this season, the garden’s quiet beauty is best discovered through every sense

Earliest gardening memory Helping my ouma and oupa water their garden in South Africa. The fruits of their labours – mangoes, pomegranates, figs – were abundant. First plant love Papaver rhoeas, the c

Paul Hill considers… Kebab Paper, Leeds 2002, ...

Caricatured as a suburban grouch, Philip Larkin was, in fact, an attentive and astute chronicler of Nature. On the 40th anniversary of the poet’s death, Richard Barnett celebrates his lifelong love of the English countryside

The garden in winter can often seem like something to be endured rather than enjoyed for gardeners who dash to garden centres at Easter, departing with cars brimful of petunias and bags of compost. Bu

Vincent van Gogh made sunflowers his personal motifs, but, when he looked to experiment with colour, a full florist’s roster of irises, roses, poppies, poured out of his brush, as Michael Prodger discovers