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I’m a lifelong organic gardener and, I always say, it’s for all the wrong reasons. I grew up in the early, cash-strapped 1950s, when gardens were not exposed to a barrage of chemicals. There weren’t many products to buy, but most couldn’t afford them anyway because the household budget was strained. My organic mentor was…
I’m a lifelong organic gardener and, I always say, it’s for all the wrong reasons. I grew up in the early, cash-strapped 1950s, when gardens were not exposed to a barrage of chemicals. There weren’t many products to buy, but most couldn’t afford them anyway because the household budget was strained. My organic mentor was…
As we creep towards the shortest day a certain sort of magic descends. Low light slants through the garden and picks up all the detail of line, texture and silhouette. I noticed this many years ago when I gardened in Hook Norton on Oxfordshire. All the older gardens had the same sturdy giraffe-like cooking apple…
We are one of just a handful of online nurseries to have attained Plant Healthy certification. In a nutshell, it’s a way of proving that we will always do the right thing in preventing the spread of harmful plant pests and diseases. The Plant Healthy Management Standard is a voluntary initiative that sets out requirements…
I never quite know whether November’s autumn or winter. Officially it’s still autumn of course, but by the end of the month many gardens are looking somewhat stark and bare because we are fast approaching the shortest day. This year it’s on Sunday December 21st and this is an auspicious day for gardeners. Once that’s…
At the end of the month the clocks go backwards and, just like everything, it’s a mixture of good and bad. The extra hour in bed is always handy, but the darker evenings aren’t quite as welcome. There are changes afoot outside, because the froth of summer is disappearing underground as the temperatures fall. On…
I’m a regular attender at our local waste recycling tip, because my low-slung cottage has very little storage space. There’s no loft or garage here. And this year I’ve been sorting out piles of stuff, because we’ve been here for twenty years.  Whenever I have any garden, or shed waste, I’m forced to make a…
Why do we prune and what effect does it have? Pruning plants is a necessity for most things you’ll be growing in the garden. It isn’t just about keeping your plants in a crisp and pleasing shape, important though that is. Pruning effects how plants grow. It can work two ways: it can promote growth…
Plants suffer the vagaries of fashion just as much as clothes do and conifers have been out of fashion for many a year, rather like bell bottoms. However, they are due a revival because lots of conifers are extremely hardy and evergreen and these two words don’t go together very often. Most evergreens tend to…
Griselinia littoralis, also known as New Zealand privet or New Zealand broadleaf, has light-green, leathery and slightly wavy-edged oval leaves held on olive-green stems that develop shades of brown as they mature. Although this handsome evergreen will form a 3-metre-high tree in New Zealand, where it’s native, it’s used as an eye-level informal evergreen…
Many of our customers buy topiary plants (and hedging plants) to grow in containers, one frequently asked question is how large does the pot that I plant them into need to be?
Great gardeners are often good flower arrangers as well and Christopher Lloyd and Beth Chatto loved to cut from their own gardens. Christopher Lloyd lived at Great Dixter in East Sussex, until his death in January 2006. His garden still flourishes under Fergus Garrett, his protégé, and it’s one place everyone should go. I just…
There are lots of occasions when you need a faster growing hedge, whether it’s for privacy, filtering out traffic noise, or for providing shelter from the prevailing winds. In the 1960s, everyone turned to the Leylandii hedge because it could put on two to three feet a year. It had one huge disadvantage though, you…
I am ashamed to say, that I didn’t appreciate how important trees are in gardens until I moved to a completely bare garden in November 2005. I set about planting my hellebores and snowdrops taken from my old garden, with the agreement of my vendors. I placed them in a spot at the lower end…
Most gardeners want to help wildlife, because it’s not what it was, and many of you feed the birds with sunflowers seeds and peanuts in winter in order to help out. Watching the bird feeders is an entertainment in itself and the extra food has allowed members of the tit family and finches to thrive…
In my last blog I wrote about the importance of woody plants in the colder months of the year, mentioning how their roots drain the ground and allow small bulbs and woodlanders to thrive in the wet winters we’re tending to get now. The overhead canopy of branches offers frost-breaking protection against the worst of…
Most of you will have noticed that we’re getting heavier bursts of rainfall in this country, so much so that some areas have had over double the amount of average rainfall this year. In 2022 -2023 we had an extremely wet, mostly warm winter and 2024-2025 seems to be following the same pattern. We have…
It’s almost five years since the country locked down due to Covid and it was a time of great anxiety. Those lucky enough to have a garden began to channel their energies into growing seeds, weeding and producing food and flowers. This helped their mental health enormously, because they could spend several hours outdoors every…
Gardeners don’t always realise the advantages of planting bare-root shrubs and trees during the winter and spring months, they may look like simple sticks when they arrive, but they romp away because woody plants have fine fibrous roots that spread out into the soil once spring arrives. They are primed to put on a growth…
September is one of those sea-change months in the gardening year. The days are getting shorter and the nights are getting cooler because the sun’s dipping towards the horizon, little by little every day, right up until the Winter Solstice when brighter times will beckon. Expect autumn mist to swirl through your garden at break…
Autumn light will stoke the fire and provide a warm glow in your garden. Ask a hundred gardeners to pick their favourite month and I can guarantee that September would be at the top for many. There’s a magical light for one thing, because the sun is beginning to sink a little lower every…
You can make a tremendous difference to the wildlife in your garden by planting eco-friendly hedging. You’ll provide nesting sites, if you allow your hedges to develop thickly and only lightly trim them in winter. There’ll be blossom for bees and wasps in spring and by autumn they’ll be fruitful hips and berries to sustain…
Expert horticultural advice on the merits and pitfalls of planting bare root yews, and how to get the best from them.
The words ground cover don’t set the world alight, admittedly However, plants that spread and cover the ground are highly useful in the garden setting. They unite your planting scheme, for one thing, often in difficult areas such as dry shade or dry soil. And the fact that they are covering the soil excludes the…
British gardeners have been relying on box (Buxus sempervirens) for centuries because this small-leafed evergreen shrub provides structure in the garden, be it intricate parterre, low hedge or sophisticated topiary. Climate change and the global importation of infected box plants has thrown a spanner in the box tree mechanics. The East Asian box tree moth…
Pleached trees are a garden-design favourite, because they provide an instant leafy screen that looks stylish as soon as it’s planted. They offer privacy for you and they help to muffle noise and that’s becoming more important in our busy world. They provide a living screen that’s far more eco-friendly than a stark wooden fence…
