It’s an important summer season for Hartley Botanic! They have been regular exhibitors at the most important flower show in the world, the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, for decades, but 2016 will be their very 1st foray onto Main Avenue with a full show garden. The garden has been designed by the very talented Catherine […]
With spring in the air it’s a wonderful time to be outdoors. A few days of sunshine reminds us that the hills and vales, the meadows, woodlands, parks and especially our gardens are precious habitats for wildlife. Whether it’s the birds singing in the hedgerow, the bumblebees nesting in the compost heap or the frogs […]
Perhaps my favourite greenhouse job of the year is releasing the contents of my mini greenhouse into the wider garden. Fly, my pretties, fly! The mini greenhouse receives a tiny bit of heat through the winter, just a low constant from a propagating mat, and this allows me to overwinter some of my favourite plants: […]
I recently wrote that for a glasshouse watercress was the most nutritious crop you could grow, and that still stands. However the huge productive capacity under cover can be more efficiently harnessed to produce even more healthy nutrition. And a very succulent, delicious and tasty increase this is; from growing baby salad leaves. You see […]
Growing potatoes in your greenhouse may not seem very exciting or even particularly worthwhile. After all, you can buy a bag of spuds for a few dollars. But imagine growing high-value fingerlings such as Russian Banana, Rose Finn, or Blossom. These can be hard to find in a grocery store, especially during winter. And they […]
I’ve always been interested in bees and thirty years ago I took part in a red-tailed bumblebee (Bombus lapidarius) study in an attempt to map their presence. I was a lot younger then and I sprinted over walls and chased up and down dale trying to find their nests in rural Northamptonshire, with limited success. […]
Dear Weather, please can you consider the date and change from your April angst to something more akin to the month of May flowers. Thank you. The soil is still cold from rainfall and frosty nights, so greenhouse sowings in pots and modules, over the previous weeks will be well rewarded. Outdoors, once the soil […]
Catherine MacDonald, garden designer, tells her Chelsea 2016 story. Having been involved with many show gardens & trade stand gardens over the years this is her first solo design working with Hartley Botanic.
The peat-free message is finally being broadcast far and wide – but it’s gardeners and growers, rather than the gardening media, who are doing the telling.
I’ve been on a bit of a healthy eating binge these last few weeks. It probably started after a pretty nasty illness I picked up on my travels, which left me particularly under the weather. Having wasted away for a few weeks (! Yes really), and then left craving for sugar and sweet things, I […]
I’ve been sowing vegetables in the greenhouse this week, going by my usual method at times of high intensity sowing, which is to say: one thing at a time. I concentrated on sowing five different courgettes on Monday, put in a second lot of peas on Tuesday, sowed some radishes in a quick tea break […]
This competition is now closed – thank you for all the wonderful entries. The winner was Lucy Underwood, and the runners-up were: Elena Grace Harrison, Ebony Scott, Jasmine Price, Katie Underwood and Saara Hussain. As we have entries being submitted in a variety of ways for our current Butterfly Awareness Children’s Colouring Competition, we decided […]
