Hartley Magazine

All the latest news, hints, tips and advice from our experts

Written in United Kingdom

Peat-free: a winners’ guide

Are you impatient for the phase-out of peat, or anxious about its implications for your garden and greenhouse? With the right advice, we can all look forward to a peat-free future. Peat-based compost – along with the ecological destruction that follows in its wake – is in the departure lounge. There is no turning back. […]

Determinate or Indeterminate; That is The Question

What can be better than going out to your garden, picking a few sun-warmed tomatoes and enjoying them for lunch or dinner? Tomatoes are the most popular garden plant grown in America, but do you know your determinate from your indeterminate? Your heirloom from your hybrid? Or why some tomatoes have VF, A, FF, or […]

Greenhouse Furniture – How to Find What You Need

Let’s say you’ve got your greenhouse. Now, let’s figure out the furnishings. Much depends on how you plan to use it. Is this the space where you will start your early vegetables? Is it going to be home to happy houseplants and your tender tropicals in the winter? Is it a light and bright extension […]

Dark Gardens: Turn off the lights!

This is not about saving electricity, or about embracing solar power to illuminate our lives, but instead it’s about appreciating and enjoying darkness. Luxuriating in shadows, letting the stars and the moon be the radiance that punctures darkness ever so quietly. Especially in the greenhouse and the garden. I’ve been reading and absorbing a small […]

Written in United Kingdom

Odd, doesn’t look like an aphrodisiac…

You need be careful with Eryngium maritinum in your greenhouse, those leathery leaves have tips sharper than holly, thus the common name. Fortunately Sea Holly does not make a large plant, just a foot or so high and across, of exceptionally beautifully hued foliage. The colour is hard to capture in photographs, less green and […]