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Springtime Play in the Greenhouse
As a Hartley Botanic Greenhouse owner and new garden writer, it’s with sincere excitement that I begin my first installment here on the topic of Springtime Play in the Greenhouse. Springtime is a Magical Season As the sun rises a little higher in the sky with each passing day, the days grow longer and brighter. […]
The Magic of Plant Breeding
When I was a young thing in my twenties, I spent some time in a lowly position in plant breeding and we worked on producing better cauliflower varieties. Each cauliflower in the field, and there were thousands of them to assess, was individually scored for depth of curd, colour and rice-like quality. The latter was […]
Birds need bugs
There are lots of positive things we can do to support our garden birds. High on the list is ensuring a rich supply of natural food, including insects. If you love the garden birds you need to love insects too because without insects our birds (and many other creatures would die). We need insects and […]
Gardening and Microclimates
Last year the US Department of Agriculture released a new Plant Hardiness Zone Map, which is based on average minimum winter temperatures over the prior 10 years. Most locations were given a somewhat higher categorization on this new map to account for global warming. So, because of ongoing climate change, gardeners may be seeing earlier […]
Time to make like the bees in the greenhouse
One of the delights of this moment of the year in the greenhouse is my dwarf nectarine, in a pot on the sunniest side. It is true that spring is starting to show itself elsewhere: I have a collection of pots and plugs of seed compost on the greenhouse bench that are showing little signs […]
Sowing starts here
At this time of year, a weather beating greenhouse is invaluable. Hot sunny days, followed by clear, cold nights means that the remains wet and cold, so it is too early for sowing outdoors directly into the soil. It’s long been accepted that parsnips are sown outdoors in February but the truth is that sowing […]
Grow you own button-hole blooms
Our greenhouses are graced with many from the Malvaceae family: Abutilons, Okra, Sorrel and Hibiscus, all somewhat resembling our wild Mallows possessing mucilaginous sap and attractive flowers. Amongst these the tropical Hibiscus are famously large, flamboyant and popular as cut flowers so often seen in tropical hotels as slow to wilt in the heat. And […]
The Colors of Winter Belong in Your Greenhouse
For more than twenty-five years, with few time-outs, I have attended Seattle’s Northwest Flower & Garden Festival. This year, in the gardens created on the show floor, I was struck by the tawny shades of winter—tan, brown, gray, and almost black—apparent in many of the displays. Not that the gardens didn’t show off massive amounts […]
Grow your own resilience
In an increasingly uncertain world, food security is high on the national agenda – but sowing, growing and saving our own seed sparks a virtuous cycle that lets gardeners take back control. What if I told you that the adaptability and resilience we’ll need to navigate the growing uncertainties in a future of profound climatic […]
How to Build a Raised Bed
Many people use a greenhouse to start seeds, but where do you put all the potted-up plants when the greenhouse isn’t large enough for them? An outdoor, raised bed can be an ideal location. Plus, with a few additions, the bed can be easily converted to a polytunnel or even a small, temporary greenhouse. The […]
Forcing lily of the valley
From March onwards the greenhouse will start to fill up, but currently it is still and quiet and pretty empty in mine. There is time to make one last winter use of it, before the spring rush begins, and force some lily-of-the-valley pips. This is something I love to do every few years. The greenhouse […]
