In times of chaos, gaining control over even one tiny part of your life can be a positive experience. And organizing your garden shed or greenhouse is a great place to start. Organization is about efficiency. Can you find it when you need it? There’s a lot of advice out there, but here are some […]
Surprisingly there are several tropical root-crop plants well suited to frost free or better warm glasshouses. Probably the best value are Colocasias as many of the same family are already valued glasshouse specimens. Sold in Ethnic shops and some supermarkets these are known as Cocoyams in Africa, Taro in the Far East, Dasheen or Eddoes […]
With the sudden popularity of gardening, particularly vegetable growing, it is important to put in your seed order early – I am sure that many of you have already done so. The sudden increase in demand last year meant that popular varieties sold out quickly and there was a long waiting time on the websites […]
Gardening is a distillation of hope: that seeds will sprout, saplings will survive, rain will come, a plant will bloom as beautifully as the picture in the catalog. It seems right to spread hope through the gift of gardening this holiday season, and there are plenty of easy ways to do it. Get kids started: […]
If you’ve just acquired a new greenhouse, what plants should you choose for it? This can be a tough decision for beginning greenhouse gardeners because of the great diversity of options available. The best approach may be to actually embrace that diversity. By this I mean picking one or two varieties from major categories of […]
Even in my greenhouse, I sometimes find that it can be tricky to get peppers and chillis to ripen over the summer. I know that some people don’t have this problem, but this is what I have found. Perhaps our greenhouse doesn’t receive as much sun as others, and perhaps we haven’t got our peppers […]
Hasn’t this been a heck of a year? In my own far-off suburban corner of Colorado it hasn’t rained properly in many months. That didn’t prevent me from planting six resilient trees, a clutch of stalwart native shrubs and some 200 bulbs that seem to adore being parched. Hope springs eternal, or so it is […]
… green gardening Christmas – and a more climate crisis-aware gardening world in 2021. Change arrives at a snail’s pace in the wonderful world of gardening – even when our fragile natural world is undergoing its own profound and irreversible change. But if ever an entwined community of folk needed to change, it’s this one […]
There’s a very good reason why winter evergreens were so important in festive celebrations. They represented eternal life As winter sets in our gardens rely on the structure and skeleton of trees, shrubs and winter evergreens. While the wonder of the autumnal hues is spectacular there is something very graceful about the winter garden. I […]
In this season of giving, I want to reflect on what gifts our gardens share with us—whether we’ve got a few pots on a porch or acres of plants. In this year of chaos and closures, many people are reporting a heightened awareness of the benefits of gardening for both body and spirit. Seattle journalist […]
When I started gardening, in the 1960s, the first thing I did was a parks and gardens inspired rose border containing twelve leggy hybrid teas of different colours. These unhealthy beasts lost most of their foliage by midsummer and they all flowered at slightly different times and at slightly different heights. However, my biggest crime […]
Growing Tips for Beginners: Greenhouse Gardening 101 The Romans were recorded as the first to create greenhouses, specifically growing cucumbers for Emperor Tiberius. There are early Korean records of greenhouses being used to grow flowers and force vegetables by 1438, and the Chinese grew mandarin trees indoors – the first ‘greene’ houses. In 1663, the […]
