The insidious effects of neonic insecticides are leaving bees and other beneficial insects with no safe place to go. There’s still hope of rescue – but it will only happen with our help.  Any day now I’ll hear a low buzz and a dull bumping on the glass out in my greenhouse. That’s my cue […]

I wish I could get excited about seed sowing, like you do. When all the proper gardeners start leaping around like little spring lambs, I turn sulky and reluctant. Maybe I’ve been secretly enjoying this long, cold winter because it has put off the time when I have to go out to the greenhouse and […]

I’ve always been a bit of a fan of weird and wonderful food plants. I love to forage in the woodland and hedgerows for ingredients to transform our diet and am fascinated by the food plants still used by native civilisations. Quinoa, amaranth, maize, potatoes, tomatoes, chillies and many more valuable crops were brought to […]

It’s the beginning of March and according to Peter Gibbs, BBC weatherman and gardening enthusiast, the cold, grey weather will be with us for a little while. There is a great temptation to rush out and start seed sowing at the first signs of sunshine, which will surely come. After a cold wet winter, it […]

Now here’s a greenhouse plant that takes almost no effort whatsoever. Or rather here are a great number of species as this is a big family and the curious collector can amass a large and interesting selection. Mostly from southern Africa these are succulent plants which although slow growing at first soon become large specimens […]

I first noticed it about two weeks ago. Those dead-looking stems that had been sitting brownly on my potted nectarines suddenly looked – almost imperceptibly – alive. There were no leaves or flowers, no bells and whistles, but something had changed: there was a livelier gleam to the wood, perhaps, but above all the buds […]

Gardening can be a pleasure for 365 days of the year. Whatever the weather outdoors, a greenhouse is a year-round refuge where there’s always some activity to enjoy, whatever the season. But it’s not just the weather which can spoil our gardening activities. Growing plants involves not just our creative talents but also skill and […]

Most greenhouses are used to grow fruit, but usually it’s tomatoes. I can’t think of many greenhouse growers that don’t have a few tomato plants growing and fruiting over the summer months, but that’s not really the fruit that I mean. I’m talking about the fruit that you eat with ice cream, custard or cream […]

For sheer colour in the greenhouse there is little to compare with Coleus or Painted Nettles as they are so accurately described. Indeed these not only closely resemble Dead Nettles but are in fact closely related to them. Now many have been renamed Plectranthus or Solenostemon though these have not caught on. The commonest, Coleus […]

Now February is here, spring is a step closer, what a welcome thought that is, after last month’s snow which put a stop to doing anything in the garden! Plants like peppers, chillies and aubergines needing up to five months to mature, should be sown this month, to make sure that they have enough time […]

Allotments are a vital, living part of our gardening heritage – and when they are threatened, it’s time to draw a line.