Amateur Gardening

“Do plants have personalities? This may seem an odd question, but according to entomology professor Richard Karban of the University of Davis, California, they certainly do. I found this fascinating, when I was considering why we like certain plants

I LOVE the summer, I love our garden in the summer and I love gardening in summer but sometimes it can feel like fighting fires all over the place. Weeds here, pests there, a few ailing plants dotted around the place – and that’s even before we get a

IF you haven’t already planted your autumn-flowering bulbs and tubers it’s a good idea to get a move on and get them in now. There are bulbs for every situation and soil. Autumn crocuses and Sternbergia, plus cheerful yellow winter aconites look stun

WE don’t have an enormous amount of room for fruit and veg so we concentrate on the crops we know we will use the most. In summer we grow beans (runner and French), garlic, onions and shallots, squash and the inevitable tomatoes in the greenhouse and

MAKING sure your garden is a tapestry of colour right through the summer is no easy matter, especially when conditions are very dry. By the middle of June we had seen no rain for over a month, making it a challenge to keep everything irrigated, while

FOR the past few years it has been impossible to go to any major RHS flower show and ignore the foxgloves on display. They are the ‘plant du jour’ of many garden designers – but don’t let that put you off, because they are worthy of a space in any ga

WE have a small native tree that will succeed almost anywhere. It is fast and willing to grow from seed or cuttings. It produces huge panicles of perfumed creamy blooms, followed by edible berries that are full of nutrients and antioxidants. Yet elde

SPRING may be the major sowing season, but don’t put away those seed tins just yet – by starting off certain crops now, you’ll ensure harvests keep rolling in for months to come! The secret to running a productive vegetable garden is to never take yo

WE made a change to our bird-feeding regime last autumn and decided not to provide food for the birds. For one thing, we had too many pigeons picking up the crumbs and I got fed with my box balls and box chickens wearing pigeon hats. The bulbs around

Q My garden is surrounded by conifer hedges. Sadly, there are a number of areas where the base of the hedge has died. What could be planted at the hedge base to fill in the gaps that have appeared? Stuart Turnock (via email) A Dieback could be due to

THE most outstanding gardener of his day was Thomas Andrew Knight, who led horticulture from the age of superstition, when custom was handed on unquestioned from generation to generation, to the more scientific approach, critical and reasoned, of the

DAME Edna Everage, the alter ego of Australian comedian Barry Humphries, who died earlier this year, was famous for brandishing armfuls of cut gladiolus. With gusto, she/he would throw them into the audience. This did much to bring the flower to the

INTEGRATED pest management (IPM) is the term used to describe an overall balanced approach to plant pest control, rather than a ‘firefighting’ one. It involves a combination of all the various measures available to the gardener to control pests, and

Q Having collected several types of succulent, some are outgrowing their 3-4in (8-10cm) pots. Should I take cuttings and start them again, or pot some of them on to make larger plants? Samantha Rainger, Cannock, Staffs A Succulents are full of charac

I LIVE in Plymouth and most of us who do, were appalled by what happened when contractors cut down our trees in March this year. They were providing shelter for the birds and insects, shelter for us and of course, as Val Bourne says, taking excess ca

BEING a good gardener isn’t just about how you garden, but when. Get the timing right, and success comes easy. Time things badly, and you’ll find yourself on the wrong side of Mother Nature – or worse, your other half… I know this because of the pair

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