Hartley Magazine

All the latest news, hints, tips and advice from our experts

Written in United States

Is My Evergreen Dying? — Arborist Kevin Narbonne explains what to look for

On certain nights in January this year, more than ninety percent of the U.S. shivered with temperatures under 30 degrees F. Especially vulnerable were those plants with evergreen foliage. So what’s a gardener to do? If you couldn’t trundle susceptible plants into a greenhouse or other shelter when the cold hit, how do you help […]

Written in United Kingdom

Midcentury Modern Plants and Gardens

The Mid-Century Modern Landscape is the title of my recent book. It’s rather misleading because it’s about gardens: I’m old school and I think of landscape as the natural surroundings in which we build or shape our dreams: The Parthenon is set in a dramatic landscape; my greenhouse is part of my garden. Oh, well, […]

Brown seeds falling from a tree
Written in United Kingdom

Don’t stop the rot

Death fuels new life in the garden, so we should delight in the signs of decay. Rot… death… decay… decomposition… mouldering… disintegration. What sort of gardener has these kinds of images racing preternaturally through their everyday thoughts? Those like me, I guess (c’mon, there must be more of you out there). While everyone else is […]

Written in United Kingdom

RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2017: A time lapse

Time lapse video of our RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2017: View a time lapse of our Hartley Botanic RHS Chelsea Flower Show 2017, professionally built glasshouses and greenhouses demonstrating the build quality and the care that goes into all our show stands. See us at RHS Chelsea, RHS Chatsworth, RHS Hampton Court and RHS Tatton […]

Written in United Kingdom

The sound of rubbing stems and Dove’s dung

Amongst the benefits a glasshouse offers can be year round flowers for cutting. Cut flowers are more expensive to purchase than most fruits and vegetables so really deserve some attention. And one of the best cut flowers for sheer endurance once cut is the Chincherinchee. Ornithogalum thyrsoides is a bulbous plant of the Lily family […]

Written in United States

Fascine—An ancient hill holder for modern gardens

I love when I come across a new (to me) gardening term. I’d never heard the word fascine, until I talked with Vanessa Gardner Nagel, award-winning landscape designer and author. She mentioned she was building fascine to stabilize the slope in her Pacific Northwest ravine garden. A fascine, she explained, is a bundle of sticks […]