At Hartley Botanic we have a good relationship with many knowledgeable garden writers both in the UK and USA – here you can enjoy reading their articles and gardening tips.
As a writer I plough a lonely furrow, sitting at home in my study day after day. I’m lashed to my desk, like a female Odysseus being prevented from the Siren call of the garden just beyond the window. I get a constant urge to dash outside and abandon the task in hand, even in […]
Usually there is a morning in October when you open the greenhouse door and the air inside smells more damp and autumnal than steamy and summery. This year the arrival of that moment is taking its time, with the beautiful golden and warm early October trying to fool us that it is still summer. On […]
Jean Vernon unravels how our garden borders and their plants benefit the little things in and around our gardens. Sometimes when autumn sets in it feels like the garden is over, but actually our beds and borders have very vital roles in the bigger scheme of things. Many of the benefits are obvious but others […]
Some of this in your greenhouse and you can divide your friends into two groups. Either, Coriander is delicious adding aroma to salads and spicy dishes. Or, Coriander has a strange mousey odour like a kennel of damp dogs. There’s no in-between position. Apparently this is genetic, not something we choose. So be warned, if […]
This year’s drought has devastated lawns and much else besides – but where once there was grass, there’s now the chance to do things differently. This summer’s drought, which in England is far from over, put our gardens through one almighty stress-test. Soil baked. Borders buckled. Seedlings shrivelled. Greenhouses boiled. Crops stalled. Butts ran dry. […]
I can’t remember a more difficult year, gardening wise, than this one! I have arms that stretch down to my knees, or that’s what it feels like, because I have carried countless heavy cans to keep my Daphnes, witch hazels and moisture-loving ferns alive. Or should I say, hopefully alive! You can’t water everything and […]
As summer slides towards autumn, there’s a group of plants that are still flowering their socks off. The daisies. and I don’t mean lawn daisies, I mean the whole extended family. And that’s the thing about plant families, they really are a miss mash of all the second cousins, the barmy aunt, plus a few […]
In the greenhouse the tomatoes are fully into their stride, but there are more yellow leaves than green ones, and the whole place smells of ripe fruit and earthiness. This is the moment I start thinking about what might come next – it is such a precious space and it needs to be used well […]
This delightful mound of feathery green foliage and cheerful golden yellow flowers will decorate your greenhouse or conservatory and has without doubt one of the most misleading names in geo-horticulture. Palm Springs is in Southern California and not so named until the middle of the 19th century. The infamous eponymous resort was not founded until […]
As our climate breaks down and food security is threatened, we need a new, bottom-up approach to local food-growing that will also knit our fraying society back together. We’re hitting the ecological buffers – hard. Five exhausting heatwaves, with record-breaking high temperatures; life-threatening wildfires (some in unlikely, urban places); wild life, from plants to animals, […]
Are yellow flowers in the garden mellow or enough to make you bellow? Jean Vernon explores the yellow effect We call it mellow yellow, but when it comes to flowers in the garden, yellow blooms are sometimes rejected and overlooked. But why? Yellow sometimes suggests sickness, possibly associated with bile and is also associated with […]
Gardening is so much more than digging holes, plonking plants in and weeding. Take fragrance for instance. It nourishes the soul and lifts the spirits and all you have to do is breathe in deeply through the nose. When I come up my garden path on. A summer’s day, I pass a mass of border […]
