News - Page 99
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Downing Street has been dubbed ‘the greyest frontage known to man’ by TV gardener Alan Titchmarsh, who is offering to buy, plant and maintain pots of plants outside the Prime Minister’s residence at No. 10.
Speaking at the first RHS Greening Grey Britain Front Garden Summit, aimed at finding ways to encourage homeowners to replace hard surfaces like concrete and tarmac with plants, Mr Titchmarsh said a pair of statuesque urns filled with flowers would brighte...
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Show off your garden and raise funds for the Red Cross with their new ‘Proud of your Garden’ fundraising scheme.
Open your garden or allotment site this summer and you can make a real difference to people in the UK and around the world affected by emergencies, disasters, and conflicts.
Great ideas for garden openings include a Wimbledon-themed afternoon tea with strawberries and cream; sports afternoons for families complete with traditional egg and sp...
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Britain is a nation of wildlife lovers according to a recent survey of 2000 gardeners which found that almost all of us – 98% - enjoy watching wild creatures in our gardens.
Over three-quarters leave an area of their gardens wild, to be colonised by frogs, toads, beetles and other creepy-crawlies; and around a third spend over £50 a year feeding or caring for the birds, hedgehogs, bees and butterflies which visit.
Over a third of respondent...
Gardeners are getting a new weapon in the war against slugs and snails as the RHS launches a year-long research project into how best to tackle our no.1 garden menace.
Slugs and snails have been top of the RHS’s annual list of worst garden pests for seven of the last 10 years. The Society is now testing six different control strategies to find out which treatment – or combination of treatments – works best.
Among the anti-slug measures they’ll be testi...
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Release biological controls on your pests and you’ll harness the power of nature to fight on your side against the creepy crawlies with designs on your plants.
Biological controls – predatory wasps, nematodes or mites which prey on our most hated garden pests – tackle pests from whitefly to red spider mite in the greenhouse, and outdoors they’ll feast on your slugs, vine weevils and caterpillars too.
You can pick them up from our garden cen...
Thin carrots you sowed earlier this spring – but this year, instead of following the traditional routine of removing all the seedlings to leave those remaining at their final 5-8cm spacings, try taking a more relaxed approach.
However sparingly you sow, you'll always get a few seedlings coming up in clumps, or too close to their neighbours. But instead of pinching them out, let them grow on. You'll find that the very smallest get overwhelmed anyway by t...
Forest gardening, or permaculture as it's more technically known, is really getting gardeners talking.
Instead of replanting your crops annually and clearing the ground after harvesting, in forest gardens the bulk of the planting is permanent, keeping soil undisturbed. It's a sustainable way of growing that's more in tune with the natural world, and less work for you.
In forest gardening, trees, shrubs and perennials are planted in layers, mimicking th...
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Flaming June and the garden is really starting to get into its stride – in fact you may have to speed up to keep up with it! Here are a few of the jobs you can be getting on with this month.
General tasks:
- Tackle perennial weeds as soon as they appear, forking out bindweed, couch grass and ground elder by the roots.
- Lay leaky hosepipes around the feet of your plants and link to the tap via a timer for automated wat...
More than 80% of us have a hanging basket habit, according to new research into our favourite choices for summer bedding displays.
The survey, by seed merchants Thompson & Morgan, found red was the most popular colour for basket bedding, with nearly a quarter of hanging basket lovers using it in their display. Purple was next, with pink the third choice. Least popular were white-flowered plants. Most gardeners use two or three colours in each basket, with...
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From bold blooms the size of tea plates to delicate nodding bells adorning a garden arch, clematis are versatile and colourful climbers that no garden should be without. Whether left to clamber-up a trellis panel to cover walls and fences or trained over a pergola, clematis are a wonderfully diverse family with varieties to choose for flowers in every season of the year.
Large-flowered hybrids are some of the most impressive, coming into their own during the...
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Get the kids into the garden this half term with a host of special offers, events, workshops and activities as we’re celebrating National Children’s Gardening Week this week!
Start with a visit to the garden centre here in London where we’ve got a packed week of fun activities to keep them busy all day, from colouring activities to plant hunts, pot painting and planting and sowing workshops where they can really get their hands dirty.
They...
Slug barriers at the ready: Britain’s gardens are in for an invasion this summer according to experts predicting an unusually high number of our least favourite gastropods.
Researchers at conservation charity Buglife have predicted that the record warm temperatures this winter means slugs have not retreated for their usual period of hibernation, but have carried on breeding instead. At the same time populations of natural predators like hedgehogs are dwindlin...
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