Nature & Garden

The delta maidenhair fern is the most delicate-looking of all the ferns commonly grown indoors, with fans of tissue-thin, fresh green pinnules held on glossy, wire-black stalks. It forms a softly arching mound that suits a shaded bathroom shelf, a shady conservatory or a sheltered patio corner in summer. Its most distinctive trait is that the foliage is water-repellent — rain...

A border edging in full sun is the hardest strip in the garden: the soil dries fastest there, the paving or lawn edge throws back heat, and every gap shows because you walk past it at close range. It needs plants that take drought and glare without sulking, and that stay neat enough not to flop over the path. A good scheme stacks height from back to front, leans on silver and...

Citrus meyeri, the Meyer lemon, is the most forgiving of all lemons to grow in a pot: glossy evergreen leaves, intensely fragrant white flowers flushed with purple, and fruit that ripens to a deep golden-orange rather than the hard yellow of a supermarket lemon. It is naturally compact and bushy, making it ideal for a terrace, conservatory or sunny doorstep where its...

A rock garden in full sun is the hottest, driest, sharpest-draining corner of the whole plot. Thin soil over stone heats up fast, holds almost no water, and burns off anything soft-leaved by mid-July, just when you want the display at its peak. The answer is to plant things that treat those conditions as a reward rather than a hardship: grey, narrow or fleshy foliage, deep ro...

Caraway thyme is a low, spreading evergreen carpeter from the mountains of Corsica and Sardinia, grown as much for its scent as its looks. Brush the dark, needle-fine foliage and it releases a warm, unmistakable waft of caraway seed rather than the usual medicinal thyme. In early summer the mat disappears beneath a haze of soft rose-pink flowers that bees find irresistible.