Weeds, wild flowers – call them what you will, but sometimes these interlopers are welcome, finds GINA PARKINSON.

WILD flowers will abound in our gardens if we allow them in, but they are more usually regarded as weeds and quickly pulled up. Dandelions and daisies are the bane of the perfect lawn, while in the flowerbeds couch grass, nettles and chickweed can soon become a problem.

I have a sneaking regard for some of these plants and allow them to colonise in the more unkempt parts of our garden. Frankly, they are a bit of a godsend when there isn’t time to keep up with some areas and they can be passed off as a ‘wild’ part of the plot.

There is one little plant that has popped up throughout our garden and which has been allowed to go its own way rather than being consigned to the compost bin. Herb Robert, bloody cranesbill, red Robin and stinky Bob are all names used to describe this dainty plant which is a member of the geranium family.

Geranium robertianum is a low-growing annual or biennial with small divided leaves often tinged bright red. It is intensely pungent if touched even lightly. The habit of growth seems to be affected by position; damp shade can produce an upright plant, while a sunnier dryer place can give more prostrate growth.

What is different about the plants in our garden is that so far they have all been white-flowered, while this plant almost always carries pink blooms.

This white-flowered form is a lovely thing appearing throughout the garden in shady spots and sunny ones, among other plants but most of all in bare patches where any growth is welcome. It has been allowed to stay where it is or dug up and transferred to other areas, including the window box on the north-facing front of the house.

Here it has mixed simply with dark blue lobelia ‘Crystal Palace’. The bushy lobelia has been enhanced by delicate herb Robert which has sent out long, thin stems among its dark leaves and flowers.


In the veg garden

THIS time three autumns ago I planted three raspberry canes. They looked unpromising, three brown stems each a foot or so long with a lump of fibrous roots at one end.

After digging and weeding a strip of soil, two sturdy, tall, wooden posts were hammered in at either end.

Lengths of strong wire were fastened between the posts a foot or so apart and the raspberry canes planted two feet apart in the bed. It seemed over the top at the time but I am glad now to have been so careful although one book I read suggested that autumn raspberries which is what ours are, needed no support and can be grown in a circle, the plants being a foot apart from each other.

The raspberries are not summer fruiting types, but ‘Autumn Bliss’ which as their name suggests ripen later in the year. The plants weathered the awful winter we had that year and sent up one or two stems each the following summer with one or two fruits.

Their second summer saw more stems but again little fruit but then the persistent rain saw a poor harvest all round so we weren’t too concerned.

This year has been a different story and our autumn raspberries are well and truly established. The frame supports thicket of stems and underground runners have cleverly grown beneath the grassy path and popped up on the other side to begin a new crop. They are unsupported at the moment which will have to be addressed if they are to stay in that spot.

Autumn-fruiting raspberries are gathered from early to mid-autumn. We have had a steady crop picked and eaten the same day – never enough to make jam, but plenty to add to pies or breakfast every two or three days.

Unlike earlier-fruiting raspberries, these late croppers don’t attract the attentions of birds and therefore don’t need to be netted. They are also left unpruned after fruiting; the old fruited stems cut to the ground in February and the plants fed with a slow release fertiliser and mulched with a thick layer of well rotted garden compost or manure.


Gardening TV and radio

Tomorrow 8am, BBC Radio Humberside, The Great Outdoors. With Blair Jacobs and Doug Stewart.

8.30am, BBC2, Alan Titchmarsh’s Garden Secrets. The programme looks at the key design features of the gardens at Hatfield House in Hertfordshire.

9am, BBC Radio York, Julia Lewis.

9am, BBC Radio Leeds, Tim Crowther and Joe Maiden.

9.30am, BBC2, Gardeners’ World. Rachel de Thame visits the gardens at Keukenhoff in Holland.

2pm, BBC R4, Gardeners’ Question Time. Chairman Eric Robson and panellists Chris Beardshaw, Pippa Greenwood and Bunny Guinness answer questions from gardeners in Tilsworth, Bedfordshire.

Friday 3pm, BBC R4, Gardeners’ Question Time. A postbag edition with Matt Biggs, Anne Swithinbank, Matthew Wilson and Rosie Yeomans. The chairman is Eric Robson.

8.30pm, BBC2, Gardeners’ World. Monty Don puts up bird boxes while Carol Klein explores the history of the rose and Joe Swift meets two gardeners who combine sustainability with style.