Make do and mend, learn to do without, pull your socks up and get stuck in: it’s time to cultivate some old-fashioned values in the garden.

Growing your own produce is second nature to a united society of gardeners, most of whom have a greenhouse as the top tool in their gardening kit. There’s not much point in growing your own food if you can’t trial a few new things, try something different and grow what you want. Generally growing from […]

I’m trying to think back to how many aubergines I have grown in my life. I dont mean plants – there have been a great many of them – but actual aubergine fruits, fully matured and ready for roasting to a delicious savoury gooeyness with crispy edges. I do recall one that got pretty close […]

Many of our most colourful and useful greenhouse and conservatory plants are Begonias. Though wandering through a botanic collection most of us might not realise just how many different plants were in fact all Begonias. For this is an immense tribe with many origins, sizes, shapes and habits, and an even more confusing collection of […]

With hosepipe bans now in place in many areas, we all need to start tapping into a more joined-up kind of gardening.

Gardeners are often blamed for wasting water, but this I feel is completely wrong. Most gardeners revere this precious resource and respond to plants by watering only when completely necessary. Real gardeners understand that plants need to grow strong roots towards the water table and be less dependent on supplementary watering. It is perhaps our […]

As predictions of ‘a worse drought than 1976’ hit the headlines, here are some water saving tips for your garden. Seven water companies in southern and eastern England – Southern Water, South East Water, Thames Water, Anglia Water, Sutton and East Surrey, Veolia Central and Veolia South East – will soon be starting hosepipe bans; […]

Some greenhouse plants are appreciated more for their luxuriant foliage than for their flowers or food appeal. Taro, Colocasia antiquorum, is a good example and ideal for gracing a frost free conservatory or bay window. Luxuriant dark green, rhubarb sized, broad arrow shaped, leaves similar to those of an Arum lily, held on stems a […]

I’ve been doing plenty of very sensible and grown-up sowing recently in my mini greenhouse – lettuce, beetroot, spinach and more, all to be planted out at the allotment as soon as they are big and ugly enough – but I have also been having a little fun with pea shoots. I ran my first […]

High-tech sunshine harvesting is all very well if you can afford it, but there’s an easier and more earth-friendly way of turning sunlight into energy right outside your back door.  

For a long time I’ve been fascinated about the effect of the moon on plant growth. I’m no expert and there are plenty of places to learn more, but the pulling power of the moon on the tides and lifecycle of the planet must in some way affect not just plant growth but life in […]

The end of last month took us from -15 C to 15C in a matter of two weeks in parts of Britain, some gardeners I spoke to expressed surprise; others, wore that knowing, well worn look based on years of experience.  I clearly remember when I was a teenager (yes, that long ago!) planting trees […]