In and out, back and forth, to and fro: this is the season of ever-watchful gardeners and peripatetic plants. Blessed as I am to be able to work from home, these days more and more of my time is devoted to commuting – although I’m not to-ing and fro-ing for work, but for the love […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

There are lots of positive things we can do to support our garden birds. High on the list is ensuring a rich supply of natural food, including insects. If you love the garden birds you need to love insects too because without insects our birds (and many other creatures would die). We need insects and […]

One of the delights of this moment of the year in the greenhouse is my dwarf nectarine, in a pot on the sunniest side. It is true that spring is starting to show itself elsewhere: I have a collection of pots and plugs of seed compost on the greenhouse bench that are showing little signs […]

At this time of year, a weather beating greenhouse is invaluable. Hot sunny days, followed by clear, cold nights means that the remains wet and cold, so it is too early for sowing outdoors directly into the soil. It’s long been accepted that parsnips are sown outdoors in February but the truth is that sowing […]

Our greenhouses are graced with many from the Malvaceae family: Abutilons, Okra, Sorrel and Hibiscus, all somewhat resembling our wild Mallows possessing mucilaginous sap and attractive flowers. Amongst these the tropical Hibiscus are famously large, flamboyant and popular as cut flowers so often seen in tropical hotels as slow to wilt in the heat. And […]