My scented pelargoniums have long been released from the greenhouse and are beginning to look their leafy best now, and producing their myriad scents in abundance: cinnamon, lemon, peppermint, spice, cola, and more. These plants are closely related to the bedding pelargoniums that we all plant in terracotta pots and hanging baskets to flower through […]
And the Latin Cestrum is hardly any better. Anyway these scented plants are well suited to greenhouses and conservatories though sadly soon grow too large to be generally popular as house plants. Not quite hardy some have tried these outdoors as wall shrubs but they don’t survive long whereas under glass they can live for […]
There’s a miracle ingredient that can keep your potting compost going on and on… but it comes with an environmental price-tag. This time last year, I was astounded by how well my greenhouse tomatoes were doing. Twelve months on, I’m truly gobsmacked at how well this year’s plants are faring. My astonishment has nothing to […]
Lack of light and cool temperatures over the last few weeks after the blast of heat and sunshine has slammed on the brakes on growth in the greenhouse. Sweet peppers and aubergines are slow get going and side shoot and the tomatoes look really lacklustre but the cucumbers in one corner, which don’t mind the […]
If you are lucky, and if the weather is warm and sunny, this should be the month when the crops sown in the greenhouse earlier in the year start to ripen. This is particularly the case if you don’t wait around for them to become big, allotment show prize-winning specimens, or even as big as […]
Diva or dependable? That is the question… As many of you know I’m wedded to my garden, my little corner of paradise in the Cotswolds. In late spring and summer, my sixty or so peonies open and the brashest of all is a lemon-yellow Itoh peony named ‘Bartzella’. The huge, flouncy flowers have led the […]
Don’t let the dreaded tomato blight reduce your harvest to mush; Jean Vernon has some timely advice. Anyone who grows tomatoes has probably experienced the highs and lows of the fantabulous greenhouse crop. Let’s be honest, tomatoes are fairly high maintenance. We spend time and effort sowing, growing, repotting, tying in, pinching out and feeding. […]
The Flowering Maple was once also popular as a houseplant but now sadly has fallen from favour. Our homes were colder and damper then than most are now and this tender shrub likes it cool definitely not hot and dry. Generally though this is an easy to care for and potentially flowering 365 days a […]
The weather has been strange this spring, with low temperatures and chilling winds, punctuated by hot days. Gardeners are used to erratic conditions, for sure, but this spring has been very odd. One interesting feature is that drought and dry cold wind have meant the best slug free hostas in the garden for years and […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
