The Guardian

Mining peat unlocks stored carbon into the atmosphere, and there are far better alternatives to help your garden grow. There has been a huge effort to phase out the use of peat by both amateur and professional gardeners....

Peat-free is the way to go

The Telegraph

Use a hoe only on sunny days when the soil is dry. Otherwise some disturbed weedlings may irritatingly re-root and go on growing. Fine-rooted weeds often snap off in your hand. To ease out the entire plant, grab the top growth with one hand and prise up the roots with a fork...

Weed war declared

The Telegraph

Now is an excellent time to plant a clematis and there should be three distinct types flowering in garden centres. The evergreen Clematis armandii (from central and southern China) produces fragrant white flowers and leathery leaves. This bee-pleaser needs space and a warm south- or west-facing wall to thrive. It can be rampant. Pruning consists of a tidy after flowering, if needed.

Plant a clematis today!

Gardeners World Magazine

Ensure bushy growth and masses of flower, by pinching out the tips of fuchsia regularly. This encourages side shoots and strengthens the growth to support the weight of summer flowers. Pinch out three or four times from spring to early summer for best results.

Gardeners World Magazine

The Telegraph

Thin out congested snowdrop clumps just as their flowers are fading. Replant in twos and threes at twice their depth of soil, and apply a liquid feed.

The big snow drop opportunity

The Telegraph

Hugely popular and rightly so is tomato, Gardeners Delight

 A cherry variety, the small fruit don’t need as much of a summer to ripen well. Hard to rival for flavour. Japanese 'Black Trifele’ (medium) and 'Costoluto Fiorentino’ (large) make an unbeatable trio.

Top plants for 2012

The Telegraph

Diane Kirkness’s request for suggestions for “easy” flowers for primary schoolchildren to grow and sell brought up some very interesting ideas from fellow readers – teachers, parents and (like Diane) press-ganged members of their local communities.

Easy planting for primary schools

The Guardian

Newborn lambs are bounding around fields, birdsong is getting louder and where did all this sun come from? I'm not the only person to notice that it must be spring again. Although, for the forager March is a little frustrating even down here in the south of England.

More free booze

The Guardian

Every spring for the last four years, I've taken myself on daily lunchtime walks around the local park, looking for bees. These walks have become a sort of ritual; a mini, personal celebration of spring. The pedant in me ticks off new species that have emerged from winter hibernation, and then I walk back to my air-conditioned office and bore colleagues with my sightings.

Bees buzzing back

The Guardian

If healthy eating and growing your own produce are among your New Year’s resolutions, you can get a head-start with The Daily Mirror’s special…

Edible gardening

The Telegraph

When I started writing this column on broccoli – or, more correctly, calabrese, for that is what those dense heads of green truly are – it wasn't easy. Not because broccoli is hard to grow – it wants utterly consistent conditions, regular watering, lots of food and no overcrowding – but because it bores me.

Less boring broccoli

The Telegraph | 6 February 2012

Treelike shrubs are great to grow in containers on balconies Balconies are highly coveted spaces, but choosing plants to enhance their elevated charms can be testing.

High and Mighty

The Observer | 5 February 2012

The one thing that is reliable about the weather in Britain is its unpredictability. Two hard winters in a row were a reminder that anything was possible – not a sign that we were moving into an ice age. To prove it, the Hamamelis mollis opened on the first day of the year, bristling free from velvety buds, and the warm weather kept the grass growing through January and saw the hellebores and snowdrops flower a month early.

Snow Drops In! PS and Irises

The Telegraph | 3 February 2012

In a new BBC series, Bees, Butterflies and Blooms, Sarah Raven addresses the crisis in our pollinator populations. At the end of winter – at the planning moment in the garden – is the time to set in train ways for making your garden more pollinator-friendly. Here she presents 8 simple ways you can make your garden more friendly for bees, butterflies and other insects.

Prepare for Pollinators

BBC Gardeners World | 1 November 2011

When visiting large gardens during spring, I always admire the drifts of dwarf flowering bulbs growing up through wide expanses of grass.

Planting Bulbs in lawns

The Mirror | 1 November 2011

Normally the time for slippers, cocoa and autumn fires, there’s too much to do in the garden for all that!

Jobs for November

The Guardian | 1 November 2011

In November, Mother Nature recycles. The last leaves fall off the trees, plants wither away, insects and other wildlife die and all is returned to the soil to enrich it for the new life next spring.

Following this example, use your old compost to make a warm mulch blanket on the borders and build a new compost heap. Try the latest thinking and chop up everything first to speed up the process.

It's all about the soil

The Guardian | 30 October 2011

Rake the last of the leaves from the lawns to give the grass air and light, and clear paths and terraces once the magic has gone from fallen foliage. Leave foliage in beds where there is robust planting, as the worms will pull it to earth to complete the cycle.

Remove foliage from herbs, alpines and Mediterranean plants such as lavender, sage and santolina to promote free air movement. Wet and cold can be lethal in combination with plants not designed for our climate.

Rake's Progress

The Guardian | 17 October 2011

So despite protestations and plans to the contrary, seems I couldn't help but sow onions sets and garlic at the weekend.

Know your onions

The Daily Telegraph | 13 October 2011

Choose a site that gets plenty of light, but is sheltered from strong winds. Avoid shade, particularly in early spring and late winter, and don't put it too close to any trees, as falling leaves will dirty the glass. If you intend to heat the greenhouse with electrical heaters, the closer it is to the house, the cheaper it will be to install

How to buy a greenhouse

The Daily Telegraph | 12 October 2011

While I feel I can boast modest success growing plants outside in the garden, I seem to be the kiss of death to indoor plants. I always end up mistreating those sad desiccated sprigs; maybe it's their total reliance on me that I resent. Now, happy in their new home (a well-lit south-facing porch), the sole survivors of a once flourishing conservatory — my succulents are my horticultural guilty pleasure.

Sucker for succulents

The Telegraph | 13 September 2011

Pick from the sunny side of the tree first. Lift apple, twist half a turn, if ready the fruit should come off.

Only store best fruit, leave damaged fruit for juicing or jamming. Store in a frost-free cellar or shed with good ventilation and low temperature.

Store Your Apples

The Telegraph | 8 September

It's been a bumper year for plums. All summer, the paving outside my house has been sticky with juice and squished fruit. In the orchards too, the trees have been laden....

Pick Your Plums

The Guardian | 12 September

Have become a bit obsessed of late with 'found food' (see recent summerhouse posts), wandering around staring at trees wishing I had a ladder. Over the past couple weeks I have scavenged (sorry, foraged) ceps, sorrel, fennel, hips, hazels, plums, blackberries, beech, elder and walnuts. I have even drunk red pine aquavit.

Foraging!

The Guardian | 14 September

With the huge increase in poultry keeping there has been an equally big rise in the range of poultry paraphernalia on sale. Poultry housing is a case in point. It's also a classic example of the good old bandwagon being jumped on.....

Chickens on the Bandwagon

The Telegraph | 14 September

We show you how to achieve an exciting burst of new spring colour with perennial flowering tulips.....

Tulips in Spring

The Sun | 14 September

AUTUMN is around the corner, so it's time to prepare your garden paradise for the onslaught of plummeting temperatures and typical torrential downpours of our beautiful British climate.

Ask the Bradleys!

Daily Mirror | 12 August

A good hour of every day should be spent in the garden fast asleep, then another gazing at the plants, then another socializing with friends – almost anything but work – but there are jobs to be done, even in August.
One of the easiest jobs in the garden is simply to look with a critical eye.

Things to do in August......

The Telegraph | 9 August

Remove lower leaves from plants once they have set their fruit. Irregular watering causes skins to split so be consistent with the watering can

Tidy Tomatoes

The Guardian | 5 August

Now is the moment to start taking cuttings of tender plants such as geraniums and half-hardy salvias, if you have found favourites that you want to see again next summer.

Start taking cuttings

The Guardian | 5 August

Grow your own strawberries are short-lived plants, so if you want your patch to stay productive, you need replacements every few years. Luckily the plants make their own. Have a hunt around in the soil of your strawberry patch and you will find that each plant has sent out long "runners".

Grow Your Own Strawberries Fair

The Telegraph | 3 August

Thanks to the phenomenally dry April, gardeners haven't had much of a problem with slugs this year. It's only now, with the wet weather of July, that numbers are on the rise.

Slugs begin at home

Daily Mirror | 14 July 2011

There is a difference between the peak of the July garden and the maturity of August.

Sometime in July the garden will look at its best, a fleeting hour when all is well; but it will not be mature. There are plants growing, striving for the sun, there are still more blooms to be had and there are yet one or two babies around the borders that have yet to show themselves.

July's Great – Just wait for August!

The Telegraph | 14 July 2011

What I love about organic vegetable gardens at this time of year, is that their abundance makes you feel inspired and creative just walking around them.

River Cafe Summer Salad

The Telegraph | 13 July 2011

RHS Flower Show Tatton Park (July 20-24) is a great chance to shop, see top-class gardens, attend the first Ladies' Day (July 21) and judge for yourself the RHS Young Designer of the Year. For tickets call 0844 581 0814 or visit www.rhs.org.uk/shows.

Spend July for the RHS

The Telegraph | 13 July 2011

'A swarm of bees in July isn't worth a fly" but that's when we got our bees. As a gardener, I would argue it is worth getting them whenever you can.

Granted, we had almost a year to wait until we had a stack of honey in the larder, but the sound of bees on a good summer's day

Become a Beekeeper

The Guardian | 10 July 2011

Creating a wild-flower meadow gives you the chance to witness the wildlife that thrives where the mower blades stop

Wild about meadows

The Independent | 12 June 2011

Too many people are abandoning their green credentials when they step outside their front door, ministers will warn this week as they unveil a blueprint to encourage more recycling on the go.

Progress has been made in encouraging domestic recycling, but while diligently separating glass, plastics and tins at home, people on the move.

A green bin to go!

The Independent | 11 June 2011

Music fans planning to attend this year's Glastonbury music festival are being encouraged to travel in a greener manner as part of a new environmentally friendly scheme.

 
This year the organizers of the Glastonbury Festival, which runs June 22-26, are promoting the environmentally friendly Glastonbury Festival Green Traveller package.

Go Green in Glastonbury

The Telegraph | 11 June 2011

The oven-like spring, allegedly the warmest since records began in 1659, looks set to turn into a furnace of a summer, with forecasters predicting highs of 91F (33C) by the end of the month.

This may be good news for sunbathers and fruit-growers, but it's bad news for hosepipes, and what's bad for hosepipes is very bad for lawns. Keeping prized grass green in a drought is a test for any gardener

Give the lawn mower a rest!

The Guardian | 10 June 2011

Last week, an entry in my gardening diary read: "First strawberry of the season. While the strawberry bed wintered under straw some of the runners, snipped and potted, weathered the frigid season in the relative warmth of the greenhouse. Spring came earlier for them and they rewarded us with a single early piece of fruit.

That one berry in hand is so much more precious than the white blossoms and unripe berries that might also come to fruition."

Strawberry Fields

The Guardian | 9 June 2011

This time of year always reminds me of childhood visits to Pick Your Own farms. Spending hours eating raspberries and strawberries, and maybe and picking the occasional one, too. But there was always a price to pay for all this abandon – helping mum pick fruit for her beloved gooseberry wine. I can still feel the painful scratches that formed as my hands dived for the bigger, juicer berries.

I could never understand why you'd go through such pain for a fruit inferior to the painless strawberry. As an adult, with a more sophisticated palate, I can now understand the bittersweet flavours of this fruit. I can also understand these trips were more about the wine than keeping us happy. Sipping gooseberry wine on a lazy summer afternoon is one of life's simple pleasures.

Free gooseberry wine

The Telegraph | 8 June 2011

Everything to which the caveat "don't plant out until all danger of frost is past" applied can now be planted out.

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