Preparing to grow Vegetables
Here are ten top tips on starting to grow vegetables and preparing a new piece of your garden or taking on an allotment. You can follow these & more hints & answers as 'live' tweets on Twitter via #WoolliesAskAlison every Thursday evening 8-9pm UKtime. As summer comes to an end it's time to look at veg growing: this week preparing a...
The original blue pot man
Jacques Majorelle Who? I would like to introduce you to an early 20th Century French artist who I can safely say has had a huge but inadvertent influence on popular garden design. Quite simply he is responsible for blue: the use of blue paint and glaze for walls, fences and pots started with his beautifully laid out garden in Marrakech, Morocco...
Get a bigger garden!
Sitting outside in summer offers a good chance to look at the overall layout of your garden and question whether you are making best use of the space – especially if it is small and enclosed. Using perspective and the odd optical illusion can increase the sense of space and subtly change our perception of an awkward shape. I am...
Pruning fruit trees
Pear tree trained against wall into fan shape Pruning is an area where many gardeners seek advice and with fruit trees, where the object is to maximise your crop, it pays to understand how good pruning can help. Of course, nature produces apples on apple trees without the gardener’s intervention but left alone the branches grow longer and taller each year...
Lawns – the good, the bad & the easy
A few tips on lawns as the summer progresses from my WoolliesAskAlison twitter tweetorial: Established, healthy lawn withstands dry summer without watering. Top may go brown but will recover when it rains. Spring & summer lawn feeds high Nitrogen for lush green growth, autumn higher potassium for tougher leaves pre winter. Newly turfed or sown lawns need to be watered in dry periods...