April marks a month of change in the garden. Longer days, rising temperatures and clear signs of vigorous growth coincide with the four day Easter weekend for many and draw even the barely-gardeners outside to exercise their green fingers. For keen growers, especially of vegetables, April brings a sigh of relief as they start to free greenhouse and windowsills of...
The first daffodils of early February may tempt us to think that spring is just around the corner and for many gardeners that means one thing: the start of the Vegetable growing season. But we all know that there is plenty of scope for wintry weather through February and March, and even here on the Kent-Sussex borders the last frost...
Firstly I would like to wish everyone a happy and successful 2025 as we enter the second quarter of the 21st century. I am not much one for new year resolutions but if I have a phrase that I would like to epitomise the coming 12 months it must be green value: the hope that individually and as a society...
One of the brightest spots of late autumn and winter gardening must surely be the potted Cyclamen that are on offer as winter bedding and Christmas presents. This blog post is all about Cyclamen because there is more than one species that we can grow in the UK and not all types suit all uses and spaces. Cyclamen are native to...
November is rarely the most encouraging time for gardening for the obvious reasons of shorter, colder, wetter days. Nonetheless it is important not to lose touch completely with the green elements of our lives. I would still encourage people to try and get some daylight every day, if possible in a green and pleasant space. It is the very fact...
October is a prime month for planting and if you visit a nursery or garden centre you will see, alongside plants in pots, a range of dry bulbs for autumn planting. Much of this will be a dazzling variety of daffodils and tulips. I will say a little bit about those first and then mention some other perhaps less well...
July must be peak fruit eating month with so much summer fruit ripening: strawberries, raspberries, cherries, followed by all the bush fruit. How much better fruit tastes when it has come straight from the garden and not been refrigerated. I read somewhere that the chemicals in strawberries and tomatoes that make them red also produce some of the flavour and...
I find April the most uplifting month in the garden because plants are all growing at full throttle. It may seem that there is an endless list of gardening tasks to do, but as we get into this month it is worth making time to undertake some propagation. There is great joy in getting new plants for nothing and being...
You may be familiar with the phrase succession planting from vegetable gardening where it is used to ensure a constant supply of fresh produce, especially for quick summer crops grown from seed. In the ornamental garden we grow fewer annuals - although I will come back to these very useful contributors to the summer borders – and the term succession...
This blog for February gives me the ideal opportunity to discuss best use of the spring planting season and a cold (i.e. unheated greenhouse) if you have one. Gardening writing, including mine, regularly talks about ‘early spring’ rather than specifying a particular month because the advent of increasing temperatures varies so much from place to place even within south east...
