Archives for May 2022
Why Low-Mow May is good for pollinators
Jean Vernon explains how going low-mow is good for your garden’s biodiversity and especially your garden pollinators If you’ve seen the call for no-mow May you might be wondering what it’s all about?? So, let me explain. No-mow May is a bandwagon that anyone with a garden can jump on. It’s a call to let […]
Healing hands
Plants will salve the wounds humans have inflicted on the landscape – but a little citizen rewilding can speed the process… and sow joy. It’s taken two decades for me to fully realise it: I’m gardening – in the foothills of Eryri in North Wales – in a land of industrial, human-made scars. A buzzard’s […]
Geodesic Glasshouses For Our Times
No discussion of greenhouses is full without recognizing that some of the great botanical gardens of the world are renowned for the geodesic domes at their heart. I grew up with the Mitchell Domes in Milwaukee, and have a postcard of the Missouri Botanical Garden’s ‘Climatron’, the geodesic dome completed in 1961 that kicked off […]
THE NEW WISLEY 8 GROW & STORE
A NEW GREENHOUSE DESIGN FROM THE HARTLEY BOTANIC HISTORICALLY-INSPIRED HERITAGE RANGE Hartley Botanic are pleased to add a new design to the popular Heritage range. The new Hartley Botanic Wisley 8 Grow & Store combines the 4-pane Wisley Greenhouse, an iconic design based on one of the 84-year-old company’s original models, with a useful partitioned-off, 2-pane storage area. […]
Growing Dahlias in Your Greenhouse
Dahlias come in many colors, shapes, and sizes, which is a major reason for their popularity. If you’re a fan of huge flowers, you can grow dinner-plate variety dahlias, with blooms up to a foot across. If compact blooms are your preference, you can grow small, pompom dahlias with tight flowers balls only about two […]
Go for Edibles
There’s only one thing I’d like more than my Hartley greenhouse – and that’s another one! And this year my need has been even greater following a dry winter and cool spring – for nothing has grown quite as well as it should. We’re approaching summer, but I still have a traffic jam worthy of […]
Basil
It is basil time in the greenhouse. The greenhouse is slowly emptying of seedlings as the weather warms up and I start to feel that it is safe enough to plant some things out, and so that makes room for those plants that will always need the little extra warmth. Basil is one of these […]
Plumbago, not a pain but a flower
Not introduced into our greenhouses and conservatories till 1818 when it was brought from the Cape of Good Hope now known as South Africa. Leadwort, Plumbago, soon became very popular with Victorian gardeners. A lax climbing shrub this can bloom non-stop from the end of winter right through until winter returns again. Without doubt this […]
Time to sow tender vegetables
Early May is the time to sow outdoor cucumbers, marrow, squashes, pumpkins (vertically on edge, not laid flat like a surf board) French and Runner beans and Sweetcorn in gentle heat around 20C in peat substitute seed compost or multipurpose compost individually in 7.5cm pots, ready for planting out once the danger of frost has […]