How to get the best from your cordon type tomatoes
Pruning Rosa Rugosa roses
Rosa rugosa group of roses are some of the hardest, toughest roses that we can grow here in the uk. They take north, south, east and west facing sites. Most soil types apart from very waterlogged soils, indeed, they will grow quite happily in pure sand on the high tide mark on the beach! They…
The great butterfly count!
Yes it’s that time of year again when the Butterfly Conversation asks for people to join in with its annual count. This count is so simple to join in! Down load the app or apply for a count pack online and then take 15minutes out and count the butterflies you see in your garden, out…
Identifying roses-Part 1, the basics
Roses are now gracing us with their splendid flowers once more. One of the biggest questions at this time of the year is can you identify my rose? So with this in mind, I have put together a small handy guide of what to look for when identifying roses . Like anything else in life…
Dead heading and summer pruning on roses-2021
Well that’s the first and only time that I shall use the word dead heading in this blog, it’s such a negative word so let’s use a more positive one that describes the old flowers perfect, spent bloom removal, see more up lifting straight away! I have also now labelled it as part of summer…
Edging your lawns
Lawn edging what a dull subject to do a blog on, what on earth will I learn from that? After all it’s just shears and trim! And I would agree to a point to the above comments but like anything we do in life, there’s different ways to do things and to different standards. Everyone…
Looking into May
I April is normally the month for finishing the winter works off in the garden but one of the coldest April’s since the 1960’s put and end to that. So a lot of May will be catching up on these tasks. This will be on top of normal Mays work. It’s pretty obvious that we…
Roses
Roses are the garden plant that everyone loves and spends their time trying to get the best from them! I’m no different, I have had a love affair with them for over 40yrs now, growing up in the gardens of Mottisfont certainly installs that love into you, just though their complete magic Roses aren’t hard…
Straightening and levelling off of box hedging
A guide on how to straighten and level off low hedges like box, yew
The garden in April
April’s a very busy month in gardening, there is so much work to do in the garden at the moment so I thought I would put together a blog featuring some of the jobs you can be doing during this time, just to try and help you all work out how to do things within…
Dividing ferns
Dividing plants in our gardens is an excellent and cost effective way of increasing our stock of an existing group of plants. For herbaceous plants, most people are used to using the method of diversion to increase their stocks but when it comes to ferns, they are too sure what to do So here’s a…
Pruning back evergreen ferns
Evergreen ferns are one of those mainstays of the garden, they provide a dark green back drop for many plants within the woodland and shady parts of the garden. Keeping them looking their best is pretty simple and is done ideally in mid spring, such as now. It’s best to do it just as a…