Is it too late to prune roses or apple trees? Trim lavender? Or plant spring bulbs? What about mowing the lawn? Is there a time when you should definitely put the mower away? I had a gardening ‘to-do’ list for this week. Then it snowed. So most of the list…
Do you have a forgotten garden corner? Does your eye glide over it, because you’ve been meaning to sort it out for months? Or even years? Maybe it’s turned into a dumping ground? Or just one or two large gloomy shrubs just sit there, adding nothing to the garden’s joy?…
If you look up garden ruins or follies in the dictionary, you will be told that they are ‘costly ornamental buildings with no practical purpose.’ However, the dictionary clearly wasn’t written by gardeners. Garden ruins and follies have several practical uses in your garden. They create a romantic or historic…
You can make these two Christmas table decorations from foraged seed heads and garden greenery. They’re quick – each takes less than ten minutes to create. They’re thrifty, because you can find most ingredients in your own garden or on walks. And they’re sustainable. When the festive season is over,…
Did you know that planting winter pots is a little different from planting summer pots? And that’s not just because the plants need to be winter-hardy. So I went to our local garden centre, Maytree, with garden designer and Great British Bake Off finalist Jane Beedle to find out more…
The value of shrubs in a garden has somewhat been forgotten over the last few years. The focus has been on perennials, annuals, bulbs and grasses. But shrubs are so easy care. They add height, interest and permanent structure in the garden. They can be used as a screen, to…
There are only a few good alternatives to box (English boxwood or Buxus sempervirens) for topiary. And I have just visited a delightful private garden in Kent which shows off both box and the best box substitutes absolutely beautifully. Box has two problems. One is box blight and the other…
You can make a container pond out of anything that will hold water. But some materials are better than others. That includes stone, metal, some ceramics and fibreglass. Many people also make container ponds out of plastic bowls or buckets. However, plastic gets brittle over time when it’s outside, so…
As I was photographing Diane and Robbie Perry’s garden in Kent, I admired the way they use garden planters to add punctuation and colour. They’ve used garden pots in five ways: Fill a gap in your border with a garden planter At the end of the summer, Diane says that…
Alstroemerias are very easy to grow. They flower from May to November in a UK garden and even longer in some other countries. ‘They’ll flower all year round if you keep them in pots in a greenhouse,’ says Ben Cross of Crosslands Flower Nursery, alstroemeria growers in Sussex. Also known…
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