What's happening this month?
I'll be guiding you through the seasons and sharing my ideas and experiences to inspire and help you get the best from your garden or plot each month.
Join me for all the latest news and advice.
10th August 2017
Now is the perfect time of year to begin the propagation of semi ripe cuttings. They sound complicated, but they are not really. They can be taken from any plant (normally a shrub) which has produced some growth this year which has started to harden at the base. Examples include Lavender, Box, Berberis, Potentilla and Fuchsia.
26th July 2017
This week we begin our tour of other peoples gardens, and the first stop for the next 3 weeks is Dawns garden. Set in a woodland environment, this north facing garden has pockets of special plants dotted here and there, with a wonderful use of colour repeated throughout each border. The rain makes it look like an autumn day, but it didn't put us off having a good look around.
18th July 2017
Another mixed bag of weather with a great day friday and a pretty miserable weekend. Now the tulips have totally died down I've removed the bulbs from the ground and put them in the shade of the cold frame to dry out. I'll store them till November in the garage and then re-plant them with a mixture of other pink varieties.
4th July 2017
This week I’m giving the Wisteria on the front of the house its summer prune. Removing the long whippy growths back to 5 buds will mean that in February when I reduce these same stems back to 2 buds, I should get plenty of flowers next May. As the plant is relatively newly planted, there are not that many to remove, and I have tied most of them in to the wires to establish a good framework.
29th June 2017
Holes in your Hostas, nibbles out of your lettuce leaves and trails on your patio. Sound familiar? The rains of late have brought our the dreaded slugs and snails en-masse, and getting rid of them is a real challenge.
31st May 2017
This week’s tool is the shovel. There’s not much I can really say about it as it’s just a piece of equipment for moving materials from one place to another … isn’t it? Well essentially yes, but so many people don’t understand the difference between a shovel and a spade.
16th May 2017
Before I go to Chelsea, there's just time to build up my propagation house, perfect for protecting and growing on seedlings and cuttings.
15th May 2017
This weeks video blog is how to lay a patio, and i had it easy as we called in an expert to show you how. He'll go through the necessary steps to constructing a well laid terrace, patio or in this case, series of transitional platforms (as the client likes me to refer to them as!).
1st March 2017
Lee Bestall shows you the jobs you can be doing in your garden in early spring.