There are certain plants that announce the beginning of a new era as effectively as a clock striking midnight at Prince Charming’s ball. The first rose of summer for instance, or the parchment of a silver birch trunk glistening in low winter sun. When autumn is on the horizon there are two that pop up […]
Provide landing pads for insect pollinators and predators and your garden will be first stop for their services. Storm Aileen has scooted through, the land is a sodden sponge, and I’m out photographing red admirals in a dry crack between September’s relentless downpours. A whole troupe of Vanessa atalanta seems to have blown in with Aileen: seven, […]
I can’t think of another glasshouse plant that suffered from such perverse name changes as this, one of the oldest of all our houseplants now known as the Jade plant. A tender succulent from Natal in South Africa this became popular way before the Victorian era. Probably because it’s remarkably tough and undemanding as a […]
Autumn is the season of lawn maintenance and this is what you do. Rake out the ‘thatch’ or dead grass and moss that has accumulated over the mowing season using a wire rake, powered lawn rake or scarifier that can be rented from the tool hire shop. To save money, you could hire one and […]
In the early 1970s I worked at a Research Station. Whilst there I carried out micropropagation by cutting the growing tips ( or meristems) from plants and transferring the tiny specks into a growing medium in a glass flask. A prime ingredient was coconut milk and I put the strong state of my gnashers down […]
As late as 2020, gardeners could just walk into a shop and buy neonicotinoids over the counter. A century on, we’re still paying the price. Zilla pressed the canister to her ear. ‘They’re barely buzzing – and it’s so hot again. You sure they’re OK?’ Inside the porous container, she could just make out the […]
It’s time to go low-mow to help feed our ailing pollinators, says Jean Vernon Lawns form the heart of most gardens, sometimes taking up half or more of the garden space. Generally the garden lawn has long been a leisure space, somewhere for the children to play and run, a space for the dog to […]
From mid-summer until November, rhododendrons and camellias are forming flower buds for next year’s display, so it’s essential that the compost or soil around them doesn’t dry out at any point, if it does they simply won’t form buds or will demonstrate their disapproval by shedding the ones that have already formed. Check your plants […]
It is time to deck my halls and I have found myself foraging in the greenhouse for materials. Of course there are a couple of rules to the making of a wreath, and one of those is that the majority of it must be made of evergreens, and you wont find any of those in […]
