ESSENTIAL LOCAL AMENITIES: The paddle steamer that chugs round the html lake delivering females html mail and supplies. We had a house there which we females used at weekends and on holidays Lake Malawi is about 350 miles females long females html and terribly deep. Perhaps these first days of spring will be what gardeners have been dreaming about html !. LOCATION: On the shores of Lake Malawi, in Malawi - formerly Nyasaland females - where I html spent my childhood.

I like the small "Sissinghurst White" and the coral-red "Redstart", which has been out since Christmas They are easy and tremendously rewarding. Their only fault seems to be that in very dry summers, their leaves get mildew. A dry summer is hard to imagine now, after the wettest of all winters. "Glebe Blue" and "Mawson's Blue" are all worth finding from specialist nurseries. Their spotted leaves and two-tone flowers are familiar, but I am building up a collection of blue forms with almost no pink in their make-up "Fruhlingshimmel" is early and pale blue "Lewis Palmer" is large and gentian blue.

All of these, and many less well known plants, are in the Wilson Memorial Garden at Chipping Campden in Gloucestershire, which is free and open every day.Pulmonarias have a less exciting provenance, but at this time of year they are lovely. Lonicera nitida, the hedging plant, was a Wilson introduction, as were Rosa moyesli, Clematis montana, Kolkwitzia and Viburnum carlesii. After he had arranged for 7,000 bulbs to be shipped back to England, he fell into a ravine on the way back to base and broke his leg. "Chinese" Wilson was a plant hunter at the turn of the century, whose most famous introduction was the regale lily.