Make Your Garden Greener Gardeners are natural custodians of their own little piece of the planet, and there’s never been a better time to be the change you want to…
Junior
Go green in borders and in a vase!
When you think of the colour green, it probably conjures up images of lush foliage, neatly mown lawns and newly emerging growth in spring. But does it make you…
How To Sow And Grow Basil
Kris shows how to start off crops of basil Fill a pot with a good quality soil-based seed compost. Tamp down the surface. Lightly sprinkle a few seeds…
Keep Your Citrus In Shape
Keep Your Citrus In Shape If you are growing citrus trees in pots they will have loved the Mediterranean-levels of heat and sunshine we experienced for most of this…
Succeeding with self-seeders
There’s so much to celebrate about footloose and fancy-free self-seeders. These plants are annuals, biennials or perennials that simply scatter copious amounts of seed. For this reason, they pop…
Lawn Care: It Takes Two
Measure twice, cut once. If you want to do something well it pays to do it twice, whether you’re pruning – check twice before you cut – or planting…
Plant out dahlias
The dahlia tubers I re-started earlier in the spring have grown well and are now ready to go out into the garden. Late May is the perfect time as the…
Lawns and chemicals
When we moved to Spring Cottage 12 years ago, the old shed contained a cocktail of chemicals, including DDT – an organochlorine pesticide that was banned in Britain in 1984.…
How to deal with garden pests
1 Box tree caterpillar The grubs cover plants in webbing. Pick them off, use a pheromone trap or nematodes, or try a chemical such as Bug Clear Gun, Defenders Bug…
20 projects for kids
The summer holidays can be stressful if you’ve got children and they get bored. Bickering will quickly set in. It is beyond most household budgets to go on expensive outings…