Graham Porter’s gardening column: dates for your diary

May 16 2009 by Linzi Nicholson, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

` Garden of the Year – have you filled in your form yet? This year’s prizes are better than ever, with the top prize of a £500.00 Examiner Travel Voucher . The winner will also receive the cut glass Examiner Garden of the Year Trophy to keep for the year, a £100.00 Armitage’s Garden Centre voucher as one of the category winners and The Faber Book of Gardens worth £12.99. Even if you come second in your category, you will still get the book and a £75.00 voucher to spend at Armitage’s Garden Centres and if you are third, a copy of the book is still yours plus a £50.00 Garden Centre voucher. Now are you going to fill that form in?

` Hugh Johnson in the Garden – for those who are RHS members, the diaries of Tradescant have been a source of amusement, information and wisdom in the RHS The Garden monthly journal since 1975. Now that the truth is out, we can tell you that Hugh Johnson is ‘Tradescant’ and you can now buy a new book with his diary entries from 1993 to 2008. What a fabulous read, allowing you to reflect back over the last 15 years to see how garden ideas and thinking have evolved in that time. At £14.99 it is a worthy contender for the best dipping book on gardening that I have found and, on quiet winter evenings, I will be searching through his diaries to find hidden gems of wisdom. Published by Octopus Books. (ISBN978-1-84533-485-7).

`There’s a plant sale run by the Friends of Beaumont Park this weekend. Head for the park tomorrow between 2pm and 4.30pm and hear Vintage Brass play on the Terrace and pick up a plant bargain.