It has been a glorious spring, with cloudless sunny day after sunny day. The lovely Tomasz Schafernaker, the BBC weatherman and self-taught artist, announced each sparkling day with a twinkle in his eye. Well, for the first two weeks anyway. And then he began to look a bit more apologetic, shifty even, about the lack […]
For some strange reason we have been programmed to loathe stinging nettles, but these plants play a vital role in nature, says Jean Vernon. If your earliest memories of nettles is falling into the nettle patch or being chased around the playground by nettle wielding classmates, you won’t have a good relationship with these incredible […]
RHS Chelsea Flower Show Tradestand no. 142 Hartley Botanic’s 2025 RHS Chelsea Flower Show Tradestand ‘Your Space, Your Story’ 20th to 24th May 2025 Celebrating Hartley Botanic’s Values – British Built, British Grown The 2025 stand at RHS Chelsea Flower Show will showcase the craftsmanship of Hartley Botanic’s Greenhouses, handmade in England to nurture British-grown […]
It has continued to be a cold spring, this year. Warm days followed by clear nights mean that temperatures plummeted as any heat absorbed from the sunshine radiated from the ground overnight. Thank goodness we can get ahead in the greenhouse. Most of my dahlias are overwintered under a heavy mulch in the garden but […]
Spring burst upon the scene this month, and was I ever glad to see it, as was just about everyone else I know in my part of the southwest, i.e. from the Rockies south thru the Sangre de Cristo mountains to Albuquerque. We had the errant snowfall…like it lost its way then dropped a desultory […]
The greenhouse can do many wonderful things, particularly at this time of year, but one of the things it cannot do is make up for me having bought tomato plants too early. I know this lesson. I learned it many years ago, or at least I should have. Tomatoes grow fast, and as they do […]
There are so many ways to enjoy strawberries, a bright-colored topping on your breakfast cereal being just one. So why not try your hand at growing them. Strawberries can be grown in pots, both inside and outside a greenhouse. Or you can grow them in the ground, either outdoors or in a greenhouse bed. If […]
Brighten up your greenhouse with tubs of colourful Fountain Grasses in red, crimson or purple marked foliage. Good splashes of colour these are especially useful amongst taller plants camouflaging bare stems or disguising tubs. Fountain Grasses are remarkably easy to care for with minimal attention yet respond with luxuriant displays throughout the growing season. The […]
There is never a perfect time to have knee replacement surgery…or any surgery for that matter. However, for this gardener, May 1, 2024, was exactly the wrong time since it erased for all practical purposes an entire gardening year. Even now, as I write this, my right knee is complaining after just a brief totter […]
Space in a greenhouse is often at a premium. Traditionally, seed starting requires room on tables for multiple containers, heat mats, etc. So, when I found out that my colleague, Seattle garden journalist and speaker, Erica Browne Grivas was working with a new space-saving method, I was interested. Basically, it involves creating long rolls of […]
Whether you’re planting a new garden, or filling out an established plot, bare-root perennials will deliver: they’re cost-effective, eco-friendly and raring to grow. It doesn’t take much to embark on a lifelong adventure in gardening. You might be a newbie with a builders-just-left-the-scene blank canvas, or be itching to make your own mark on a […]
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 […]
