Welcome to winter

by Mark Evans

As winter arrives and the days grow shorter and darker, just because the sun is fading it doesn’t mean that your garden has to also. You can overcome the dreariness of winter in the short term by injecting some colour with annuals like calendula, pansies, primroses, violas or Iceland poppies but, unfortunately, … Read more »

Digital Gardening

by Mark Evans

Like most gardeners, I have a big pile of plant labels that I have collected over the years. I hang onto them because the labels contain handy growing information (not to mention their names). Recently, however, I developed a dilemma. I went on a bit of a cutting spree in a couple of gardens and the problem arose as to how to keep track of the needs and names of all these plants? 

I … Read more »

What’s in a name?

Mark Evans

As gardeners, we should all try and learn the botanical names of our plants as well as their common names. The reason is that because the same common name sometimes applies to multiple plants and, conversely, a single plant may have multiple common names! Knowing the botanical name helps to remove any confusion, especially when you are talking to other plant lovers.

Each botanical name is unique to that species and is composed of two, (usually) Latin … Read more »

Herbs for all seasons

Keith Mundy

With the ever-increasing demand for food to be labelled with the origin of the supply, one sure method of knowing the location of where it is grown, is to grow your own.
With the desire to try new and exciting taste sensations a great way of doing this is to use the amazing number of herbs that are available to us that are easily grown in our own … Read more »

Trees – for the future

Keith Mundy 

Continuing on from last month’s theme of autumn, April is usually the month that we start to notice the beautiful colours of the autumn trees that are dotted around the countryside with shades of vivid yellows, oranges and reds highlighting the gardens that they adorn. Not only are autumn trees grown for their beautiful colours but just as importantly they are also grown for summer shade. 

Care should be taken with the selection of these plants as … Read more »

Glorious autumn

by Keith Miundy

Well, here we are heading into the cooler months of the year again and let’s not forget that the garden can be as beautiful in the throes of late autumn/winter as during the warmer seasons of spring and summer.

The cooler months bring with it the beautiful colours of deciduous trees with their interesting shapes and bark colours as they commence to enter the wintering phase. There’s no better time than now to see the amazing … Read more »