Some favored container plants luxuriate outside all summer, and when the weather shifts, they’re hustled into the greenhouse, frost-free porch, sunroom, or even a windowsill. These summer/winter dancers are mostly perennials or small shrubs— tender for whatever zone you’re in. What makes them worth the trouble? Outside or indoors, the best ones are easy care. […]
I’ve not grown potatoes in my garden for a while. I’d been keeping my precious veg space for crops that I considered to use the space better. But over this autumn and winter for some reason I’ve struggled to find organic potatoes locally and when I have they have been tasteless. Coupled with some scary […]
If you need to be inspired by the power of composting all over again, just take a look at the figures; the quantity of ‘waste’ that an ordinary bin can divert from landfill is quite remarkable. I stopped, teetering on the bin’s rim, about to make a terrible, albeit colourful, mistake. The first post-Christmas hoovering […]
When everyone else is sowing sweet peas in their greenhouses and cold frames in autumn, I have learnt to hold my nerve and bide my time. I know that an autumn sowing is the accepted way, but it has never really worked for me. Perhaps because my greenhouse is not sited in the ideal sunny […]
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Bananas are native to Southeast Asia, so growing them in northern climates is a challenge. When I first tried growing bananas in my Rhode Island greenhouse, I kept the greenhouse warm all winter, knowing that bananas prefer temperatures over 77o F (26oC) year round. After three or four seasons and a lot of money spent […]
Okay of the many tender glasshouse plants Saintpaulias can be one of the trickiest. Yet almost everyone knew an aunt with a massive old African violet enduring on for years blooming almost perpetually. It will have been the original blueish violet flowered Saintpaulia ionantha, and it was probably set on a table in some north […]
Several times over the past few weeks, I have spotted a male Bull Finch among the leafless trees in my garden. It is a beautiful bird with grey, salmon pink and black markings but it can be a pest to gardeners. Normally bullfinches eat grass and weed seeds, but when supplies run low and temperatures […]
There are people who think that writers have an exciting life, full of jollies, junkets and japes. Nothing could be further from the truth. You see we writers write just to escape all that unnecessary razzmatazz. It’s so much easier living life on a written page, than doing it for real, so we hide away […]
2020 has been set as the target for completely peat-free gardening – but we need clear directions if we’re to get there in time. There are four years to go. Sixteen of our increasingly blurring, juddery seasons left. And then we gardeners – and the businesses that profit handsomely from us – will together make […]
There is almost no month in the year when you can’t be sowing something in the greenhouse, if you really put your mind to it. As if to prove this I have found myself heading down the garden these last dreary days with a packet of onion seed, just like the monster veg growers. The […]
Hartley Botanic is pleased to announce its sponsorship of Perennial’s special events programme for 2017. Perennial’s special events offer exclusive access to some spectacular gardens across the country, many of which are not usually open to the public. From an exclusive tour and lunch at Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons, which features a fabulous Hartley […]
