The weather can fool you into thinking that it's May not April and I had a mild panic thinking that I was late in sowing my vegetables in the greenhouse, until I realised that this warm weather had confused me for a moment.

Nevertheless I got straight to work at the weekend, sowing sweetcorn, squash, cut and come again lettuce and courgettes, which are sitting in the heated propagator.

I am trying a new technique this year, sowing into drainpipes. I bought a length of drainpipe from the DIY store and preceded to cut it in half and fill one length with compost.

The idea is to sow into the drainpipe and when the hardened off seedlings are ready to plant out, you just make an indentation into the soil and then slide the little plants into place.

I used my new tool from Burgon and Ball to help me to plant the pea seedlings into the drainpipe at the correct spacing.

I have no sense of size, so the seed and plant spacing rule is the ideal tool to use, especially as I promised myself that this year I will plant my vegetables at the correct spacing and to make things even easier for you, it has a guide printed on the ruler, for planting out the popular plants and seeds.

I have planned out my vegetable bed, making sure that what I planted last year is not in the same place this year. I don't have a very big plot, so I have to think really carefully what to plant and where.

Instead of planting courgettes in the bed, which take up an enormous amount of space, I am growing climbing courgettes to grow in pots. My broad beans are in a wooden planter and my purple sprouting broccoli, which is nearly ready to start harvesting, are in potato sacks, which will once again have potatoes planted in them, when the broccoli is finished.

I spotted, whilst at B & Q buying the drainpipe, some vegetable patio planters by Haxnicks. You get 3 in a pack, which I thought would be ideal for growing my lettuce and perhaps peppers or chillies close to the house, so I don't have to go up the garden path first thing in the morning to pick lettuce, when preparing my salad for work.

The flower garden is growing inches by the day. I have the most wonderful orange tulips in flower and I think next year I need to have more spring flowers in the garden. My peony and climbing rose have fat buds, waiting to burst over the next couple of weeks and the lavender is putting on plenty of new growth.

Earlier this month, I was invited to attend the National Garden Scheme launch of this years Yellow Book.

Last year the NGS raised 2.6 millions pounds for caring charities, so it is great honour to be part of this wonderful charity and feels very special, when they use my photographs in their book, which this year went to full colour for the first time.

They used photographs of Aviemore, Fritham Lodge and a full page colour photograph of a Dahlia, taken at Hilltop. All of these gardens I heartily recommend visiting.

It's time to get my diary out and decide which gardens I am going to visit to photograph this year.

What a busy time I shall be having - but I wouldn't have it any other way.

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