Canny gardeners don’t leave leaves lying – this autumn windfall matures into gardening gold. There’s one turning of the seasons which arrives here with a right old clatter. After a cold jolt in August, most gardeners have been teased throughout September with only vague hints of impending autumn. In my garden, warm, balmy days and […]

Often with greenhouse plants we find beautiful blooms such as Bougainvillea are not really flowers at all. These are spectacular displays of modified leaves termed bracts. These bracts form the visible ‘blooms’ and look wonderful for many weeks. Whereas the real floral parts are almost insignificant and not long lived. Anyway this technical difference matters […]

I’ve always loved gladioli; cheerful, undemanding and appealing, they were among the first things I planted as a child and I still have a soft spot for them today. Over the years they have been stalwarts of allotment and village flower shows, yet despite falling from fashion in the garden, breeders continue to produce new […]

The RHS Award of Garden Merit is under review – so perhaps we should take the opportunity to raise the bar on what we mean by ‘merit’. A recent episode of ‘Gardeners’ Question Time‘ (GQT) on Radio Four aired one of the most mind-numbing segments I’ve heard in a while. Although it was some relief from […]

What started in the greenhouse in March is reaching fruition – very literally and bountifully – in the polytunnel now. So many of the months of growing Mediterranean vegetables are about hope, luck, graft and maintenance, but September is very definitely payback time. The plants are barely recognisable now as those tiny shivering things I […]

When you invest your time and money into a greenhouse you want it to saturate every part of your life. The obvious benefits are registered by the leisure and pleasure receptors that are fired up and illuminated by simply taking time out to garden, grow and reap the fruits of your labour. The sense of […]

Sounds like a sneeze, but very pretty, Kalanchoe Kalanchoes are tender greenhouse succulents with masses of brilliantly coloured small flowers that last many weeks in bloom. Most species come from West Africa, Asia and Madagascar, though the name is apparently of Chinese origin. Anyway Kalanchoes have also been called Bryophyllums, Kitchingias, Crassulas and Vereas. One […]

September is traditionally the month of lawn maintenance. If you have a small lawn, rake out the ‘thatch’ or dead grass and moss that has accumulated over the mowing season, with a wire rake; on larger lawns, use a scarifier. Spike compacted areas with a fork, face the front of the fork, then push the […]

Maybe I’m getting old, but I find I am more and more attracted to plant collections these days. I used to think it was a male phenomenon, that need to tick boxes and own every single member of a plant family, but now I’m not so sure. Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t filled the […]

I am quite enjoying the sudden cool, and it is leading to a bit of a changing of the guard in the greenhouse. While this has until now been an incredible summer for anything that loves heat – tomatoes, chillies and even aubergines currently thrive in both greenhouse and polytunnel – there is one crop […]

If you cultivate an enlightened attitude to wild plants instead of trying to eradicate them, your garden can share in their success. Put ‘kill dandelions’ into a search engine and up flash nigh on half a million ‘hits’. A good chunk of these include advice on exterminating dandelions using chemical weedkillers (especially the worldwide pollutant […]