Unlike the costly high-tech carbon capture and storage strategies being proposed to mitigate climate change, tree-planting is free, simple, people-powered – and proven. I’ve beaten the redwings to it. The crowd has skirted along the edge of the wood and descended on my neighbour’s rowans, where they’re now merrily stripping them of their dazzling orange […]
“If you can read a book, you can do anything.” Short of embroidering it on a cushion, that’s a mantra I’ve lived by since my best friend in high school wised me up. I’ve packed in a lot of reading since then, researching the history of garden design and landscaping for the books I’ve written, […]
A year or so ago, a friend was throwing out a dozen ten-foot-long, one inch-diameter, galvanized pipes. I said I would take them with the thought in mind of building an affordable hoop house. Having filled my 300-square-foot heated greenhouse with more than 200 plants, and with more plants than I intended in my unheated […]
Winter is knocking on the door once again and there’s lots to do in the garden in preparation. The trouble is you can never predict what winter will bring and I would like every gardener to be provided with their own personal crystal ball – particularly now that our climate’s so changeable. What will the […]
Whether you want to plant for wildlife or deter burglars, the humble bramble has many attributes I have a long and chequered history with the humble blackberry. As a child I lived on a crescent of houses and in the middle of the crescent was an allotment site, where we had a plot. We didn’t […]
It is annoying when one of your great greenhouse successes of the year is not one you planted… or even particularly wanted, but so it has proved this year. Call me a party pooper but I am not a big fan of a giant pumpkin. I love Hallowe’en and I love the pumpkin’s role in […]
So why on Earth would you want to grow this in your greenhouse? Well, because this is a living ‘pot pourri’. A South American relative of Asters it’s delightful though as the disparaging quote from Paxton’s Botanical Dictionary suggests it’s neither graceful, compact, neat nor colourful. Thus certainly not a centrepiece, nor a background foliage […]
I hope you have invested in at least one Hartley Botanic Water Butt to collect rain from the deluge that has poured down on our glasshouses over the past weeks. Use the tepid rainwater in the greenhouse on acidic loving plants like Citrus and if you have spare, water under the eaves over winter in […]
Quiet, non-polluting, kind to wildlife, people-powered, earth-friendly: scythes win over strimmers on every count – but sometimes you need to see to believe. It’s the sound that pulls them in – the harsh, honing rip of stone against steel isn’t an everyday sound here. As soon as I start sharpening, heads start to turn. ‘Is […]
There was an unforeseen delay in my getting this letter written – the peaches on my elderly tree were ripe and the weather was due to change overnight from 90° and bluebird skies to 55° and sodden grey. Welcome to the Front Range. With the right kind of greenhouse this wouldn’t be a problem: the […]
In the busy life of a home gardener, tools are essential. However, if your time is like mine, in the garden and the greenhouse, I’m more focused on caring for plants than I am on caring for tools. And yet, as my friend and artist Phyllis Helland observed, “A shovel easily knifing into the soil—there’s […]
Most gardeners love to inject their garden with a huge dose of colour, Whether that’s flamboyant bedding schemes, flowers for cutting or the spring spectacular of flowering bulbs. Colour is the lifeblood of most gardens. But it doesn’t have to be dramatic and lairy, it can be soft and calming too. Learning how to use […]
