Learn from these informative gardening YouTube channels
Image: silverkblackstock

With so many sources of online gardening help, advice and information to turn to, it can be difficult to know where to start. To help you sort the good from the not so good, we’ve checked out a plethora of gardening YouTube channels for the quality of their content. Here’s a selection of some of the best. Enjoy.

Kelly’s Kitchen Garden

Kelly keeps her kitchen garden flourishing with a simple sowing system
Image: Kelly’s Kitchen Garden

Do you struggle to manage your sowing and successional sowing schedules? Let Kelly show you how she keeps her busy kitchen garden planting organised – her simple system is easy to replicate, helping you make the most of your garden or allotment.

A brilliant channel with heaps of handy gardening tips, green-fingered Kelly is a friendly and informative host who shows your her mistakes as well as her triumphs. She’s also a passionate baker, loves to cook over a live fire, and because she gardens in Scotland, her channel is also a must for cool climate growers.

Garden Organic

Tune into Garden Organic for green fingered tutorials from a community of gardeners
Image: Garden Organic

If you’re sick of slugs and snails devouring your seedlings and garden plants, Garden Organic has some simple fixes you can try without resorting to nasty chemicals. Like leaving an upside down empty grapefruit half, baited with lettuce in a strategic location; slugs will congregate underneath ready for you to eliminate them.

Garden Organic is the UK’s biggest organic gardening charity with over 20,000 members and 60 plus years experience of promoting green growing practices. Looking for some quick tips on siting a garden pond? Look no further – stay away from hedges and tree roots and don’t forget that slope to ensure amphibians have easy access.

Gardening at 58 North

Gardening at 58 North specialises in small space and balcony gardening
Image: Gardening at 58 North

Have you ever wondered what’s going on beneath the surface when your seeds germinate? You need to take a look at Gardening at 58 North’s awesome 10 day time-lapse video of a runner bean taking root and growing shoots; you’ll be amazed.

Focusing on small space and balcony growing, this channel is a must for anyone who likes to maximise their plot’s performance. Find out just how easy it is to turn one anaemic-looking supermarket basil into multiple lush, bushy plants with nothing more than a pair of scissors, a mug or two of water and some potting compost.

Allotment Gardener

Follow Matt’s journey as he transforms a disused wasteland into a bustling allotment
Image: Allotment Gardener

Don’t forget to keep checking your onions for flowering heads – an important job around planting-out time in May, says Allotment Gardener, Matt. These second year plants won’t get any bigger but if you leave them, they’ll throw all their energy into flowering.

Matt is informative and has that wry sense of humour all good gardeners possess – the ability to laugh at the vagaries of nature. Since taking over his plot in 2016, Matt has turned a wasteland into a working allotment. An inspiration as well as an excellent source of handy gardening hints and tips, Allotment Gardener is highly recommended viewing.

Garden Ninja

Lee gives plastic-free gardening a try with great results!
Image: Garden Ninja

When the Garden Ninja – professional garden designer, Lee Burkhill set himself the challenge of eliminating single use plastic from his garden, a steep learning curve ensued. Join him as he repurposes cardboard egg boxes, loo rolls and more, to prove that with just a little bit of willpower and imagination, going plastic-free is easily doable.

Winner of the BBC and RHS Feel Good Gardens Competition, Lee’s video guides help you create awesome garden designs of your own. Check out his Family Garden Design Transformation for a wealth of fun, creative ideas.

Nick’s Allotment Diary

Take on Nick’s sunflower growing challenge today!
Image: Nick’s Allotment Diary

Try and get as much of the root as you can when you’re pricking out seedlings, says YouTuber, Nick; that way the plant has the best chance to establish itself. Potting on brassicas? Make sure you firm around the roots to make it harder for the wind to push the plants over.

Share in Nick’s journey as he grows fruit and veg on his North Wales plot. Fancy joining Nick’s 2019 sunflower challenge? He has three categories this year: tallest, largest head, and most unusual variety – check out the video for info.

Diary of a UK Gardener

Follow avid gardening vlogger Sean in his endeavours down the allotment
Image: Diary of a UK Gardener

Think you can remember everything you’ve sown so far this season? Organic allotmenteer and avid Vlogger, Sean thought so, but it turns out he sowed Evening Primrose twice in one month. That’s why he says it’s so vital to take an inventory of what you’ve already sown and what seeds have yet to go in the ground.

Sean has been filming his gardening adventures since 2012. Last year he walked away from his allotment of 11 years to a much bigger plot of land. Follow his YouTube adventures as he develops this new allotment to a productive vegetable and fruit garden. Later this year Sean plans to take on another allotment and run it using information supplied by the 1940’s Dig for Victory campaign. Sean James Cameron’s Diary of a UK Gardener is: “The Good Life meets urban London living.

UK Here We Grow

For seasoned growing advice, make sure to bookmark Tony’s channel
Image: UK Here We Grow

Problems with creeping cinquefoil? This troublesome weed looks a little like a strawberry plant, only with five-bladed leaves rather than three. Just like strawberries, cinquefoil spreads by sending out runners, but each node sends down a deep taproot. The bad news, vlogger Tony says, is that if you leave even the tiniest piece of root in the ground, it will regrow. Check out his tips to get rid of it for good.

Want to grow nutrient dense organic food? Tony’s channel is the perfect place to start. Covering everything greenfingered, including beekeeping and poultry, you’ll find just the helpful advice you need to get the most from your plot. Check out Tony’s 12 tips to grow better tomatoes – give the roots plenty of room…

Yorkshire Kris

Visit Kris’ channel for advice on growing exotic plants in a colder climate
Image: Yorkshire Kris

Think you can’t grow a tropical garden in Yorkshire? Kris can – check out his video of his plot in the coldest temperature he’s ever experienced in his garden. The mercury read -5.8C, but plenty of fleece, good positioning, and the plants’ own defenses save most from the worst of the frost.

The UK isn’t perhaps the best place to grow tender plants, but as Kris demonstrates, it is possible. If you’d like to give it a go, this is the YouTube channel for you. That said, there are some tropical species best avoided. Check out Yorkshire Kris TV for the top 10 – sasa bamboo for one – once you plant it, it’ll spread like crazy and you’ll never get rid of it.

Tony C. Smith

On his channel,Tony shows off both the good and the bad days at the allotment
Image: Tony C. Smith

Bad day at the allotment? Pigeons ate Tony’s brassicas, other birds feasted on his banana shallots. The red onions? Scythed. And when he went to buy replacements, he bought the wrong ones – not to worry – planting chard is just the thing to cheer Tony up.

Informative and entertaining, Tony’s YouTube channel is full of handy hints and good ideas, and he also makes a witty, warm, and energetic presenter. Thinking of growing your own? Check out what a good day in the allotment looks like – remember, a bad day in the garden beats a good day in the office.

Did we miss one of your favourite YouTube gardening channels? Head over to our Facebook page and let us know what gardening vlogs you love to watch. Alternatively, you might be interested to know we have our own YouTube channel – Thompson & Morgan TV. It’s packed full of useful info, hints and tips to help you get the most from your gardening.

Thompson & Morgan

Since the first seed catalogue was published in 1855, Thompson & Morgan has grown to become one of the UK’s largest Mail Order Seed and Plant companies. Through the publication of our catalogues and the operation of our award-winning website, Thompson & Morgan is able to provide home gardeners with the very best quality products money can buy.

Drought tolerant plants look good and are low maintenance
Image: Peter Betts

There are lots of good reasons to grow drought tolerant plants. During hot summers the need for frequent watering is time consuming. Not to mention costly to the environment and your pocket too, should rainfall in your area fail to keep up with demand.

We asked The Sunday Gardener, Carol Bartlett, her advice on drought tolerant plants. Here are some of her all time favourites, some of which positively thrive on neglect…

Why choose drought tolerant plants?

Aromatic and easy to grow, lavender is loved by pollinators
Image: Lavender ‘Hidcote’ from Thompson & Morgan

Some areas of the country are significantly drier than others. Parts of the south-east like Essex, Kent and Cambridgeshire receive as little as as 513mm of rainfall per annum. Last year, Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk recorded 49 consecutive days without rain.

London is another area of very low rainfall. The capital gets around 557mm per annum – less than Miami and Florida. In these drier parts of the UK, successful gardening is very much a case of “right plant, right place.”

Water is a precious resource, and going forward we need to continue to find ways to conserve it. Incorporating drought tolerant plants into our gardens is an important step towards helping the environment.

The good news? There are some fantastic drought tolerant plants which rarely get thirsty, require very little time and attention, and bring show-stopping structure, scent and colour to your beds and borders. Here are some of the easiest to grow.

Silver and grey leaved plants

Artemisia ‘Valerie Finnis’ looks beautiful against Nepeta ‘Six Hills Giant’
Image: Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh

This group includes many of my garden favourites and these plants look great when planted together. Lavender is particularly suitable for dry ground, and there are many stylish varieties that work well as a low hedge along a path, releasing their scent as you brush past.

The shrub Artemisia has finely divided silver leaves which are also aromatic. Illustrated is Artemisia ‘valerie finnis’ whose pale silver foliage makes a fantastic combination alongside the blue flowers of Nepeta.

Perovskia, commonly known as Russian sage, has grey/green leaves and masses of spires of soft blue flowers, which the bees love. It’s a small aromatic shrub that’s easy to grow in dry conditions. Perovskia requires pruning in late April/early May. This is to keep the growth compact, cutting back to a small framework of just a few inches. It’s important not to cut the woody parts which don’t have buds, which is why pruning is often delayed until the buds appear as a guide.

Stachys Byzantina, also known as lambs ears, probably has the softest, most downy, silver leaves of any plant and is totally irresistible to the touch! Spires of grey leaves produce small mauve flowers from late June onwards. These insignificant flowers are a bee magnet – attracting bumble bees and female wool carder bees who harvest hairs from the plant’s leaves to make a nest.

The Salvia family is easy to grow in dry areas and this includes common sage, an attractive, small evergreen shrub useful for culinary purposes. Amongst the more colourful flowering varieties are Salvia x sylvestris ‘Viola Klose’ a strong violet blue; and the popular two-toned Salvia ‘lips collection’ – ‘Amethyst Lips’, ‘Hot Lips’ and ‘Cherry Lips’.

Drought resistant shrubs are a good way to provide structure and all year round interest in your planting scheme. Mediterranean shrubs like Rosemary and Santolina are ideal, as is the sun-loving Cistus which grows wild in many areas of the Med where it bakes happily in the sun. Buddleia is ideal in a dry sunny spot with the added benefit of being attractive to pollinators and butterflies. If you don’t have space for a large shrub, there are now more compact buddleia varieties too.

Drought resistant garden favourites

A striking drought tolerant border in Oxford
Image: The Sunday Gardener

Creating a drought resistant border doesn’t mean settling for something dull. Amongst the group of drought tolerant plants there are some real show stoppers, such as Agapanthus. The striking blue flowers of agapanthus are always eye catching and combine beautifully with the terracotta shades of Achillea, which are also drought tolerant.

Many of my favourite perennials also happen to prefer dry soil:

• Crocosmia
• Echinacea purpurea (Coneflower)
• Eryngium maritimum (Sea Holly)
• Papaver (and the entire poppy family excluding the Himalayan blue)

Even taller, growing up to around 60cms, and a definite garden favourite is Verbena bonariensis with clusters of tiny purple flowers which are attractive to bees and butterflies. It’s not fully hardy all over the UK, but helpfully self-seeds to create new plants for next year. A mulch will help it through the winter.

This perfect drought tolerant planting combination was spotted in Oxford: Verbena bonariensis, sedum, mauve flowering asters and the grass Pennisetum, all of which will tolerate a prolonged dry spell.

Best drought resistant bedding plants

Hardy periwinkle can thrive in almost any soil, even dry shade
Image: Vinca Major ‘Maculata’ from Thompson & Morgan

Late spring is the best time to fill gaps in your borders with bedding plants and brighten up summer containers. Some bedding plants are better suited to drier areas than others, although container plants will always require watering, simply because of the growing environment.

Pelargoniums, also known as geraniums, tolerate a great deal of heat and dust. Think of holidays abroad when you see geraniums tumbling from balconies in the hot Mediterranean sun – they love it! Similarly, Gazania and Mesembryanthemum (Ice Plants) like it hot, dry and sunny, not least because they belong to a group of plants whose flowers close when the sun sets, or on cloudy days. Closing their blooms helps to conserve moisture.

Additional bedding plants for dry containers are Argyranthemum (Marguerite) and Osteospermum, both of which have daisy-like flowers. Nicotiana, dahlia, and the lovely muted tones of salvia ‘seascape’ also make good container plants.

Is it a shrub, or is it ground cover? Vinca major, (also known as periwinkle) with its attractive mauve flowers, is drought tolerant. In this combination periwinkle has been planted with ivy, which is very resistant to drought, to make a container display which will thrive on neglect. Alternatively, the 2019 Chelsea Flower Show’s ‘Plant of the Year’ first prize winner, Sedum ‘Atlantis’ is happy as ground cover and in containers. It’s also very popular with pollinators.

How to look after plants in a drought

Even drought-resistant plants will sometimes show signs of stress, and watering may become necessary.

For more efficient watering, check plants individually by testing the surrounding soil to see how dry it is. Some plants will need more water than others. Always apply water to the roots, and in the evening, when less will evaporate. Finally, applying a mulch also works wonders: it conserves water, reduces weeding and improves the look of borders.

Carol Bartlett

Carol Bartlett, The Sunday Gardener, lives in the north of England where she has created a diverse garden including wildflowers, natural areas, herbaceous borders, a wildlife pond, trees and wetland plants, along with a vegetable plot. She has been gardening, reading, researching and photographing plants for over twenty years and her website is a popular resource for gardeners young and old.

https://www.sundaygardener.co.uk/

Give your garden a pollinator friendly makeover
Image: Dogwooddays

Planting for pollinating insects has never been more important. As insect populations decline across the world, we need to find ways to help these essential invertebrates, for our future as well as theirs.

Gardeners can play a vital part in this recovery. With over 400,000 hectares of garden habitat across the UK, filling our gardens with plants that provide food sources for butterflies, bees and other pollinating insects can have a significant effect.

We asked garden designer, Nic Wilson of dogwooddays, for her thoughts. Here are eight simple suggestions to help make your outside space perfect for pollinators:

1. Add pollinator-friendly trees

Beautiful blossom on Nic’s espaliered apple tree is a great source of pollen
Image: Dogwooddays

Trees provide important sources of pollen and nectar for insects, especially bees, as they have many flowers close together. Flowering cherries like Prunus ‘The Bride’ and Prunus ‘Little Pink Perfection’ are ideal small garden trees, reaching two metres at maturity.

Fruit trees also offer masses of spring flowers and have the advantage of a delicious harvest. My family love the honeyed fruits from our greengage tree and we also grow several apples as cordons and espaliers. With a dwarfing rootstock and a trained form, fruit can be grown in even the smallest of spaces.

2. Consider flower shape

Pollinators love Campanula bells planted en masse in blues, whites and pinks.
Image: Campanula medium (Mixed) from Thompson & Morgan

Choose cultivars with single blooms as the pollen and nectar producing organs in double flowers have often been transformed into extra petals. With single-flowered perennials like Geum ‘Totally Tangerine’, Geranium ‘Rozanne’ and Echinacea purpurea, you can fill your garden with food for native insects.

Growing different flower shapes such as bell-shaped (campanula, bluebells), tubular (heather, verbena), and flag (pea family) will attract a range of pollinators.

3. Plant in swathes or drifts

Salvia ‘Hot Lips’ looks stunning when planted in swathes
Image: Salvia Hot Lips collection from Thompson & Morgan

Insects use less energy if their food sources are close together, so planting in swathes not only creates a sophisticated effect, it also makes feeding more efficient. For a late summer combination, fill containers with a collection of salvias like Salvia ‘Hot Lips’, ‘Cherry Lips’ and ‘Amethyst Lips’.

Alternatively, plant intertwining drifts of Eryngium planum ‘Blue Hobbit’, Echinacea ‘Rainbow Marcella’ and Perovskia ‘Blue Spire’. The contrasting blue and orange tones will create energy in the border and the pollinators will love this late food source.

4. Fill gaps with pollinator-friendly annuals

Pollinator-friendly annuals like rudbeckia are a striking way to fill gaps in borders
Image: Del Boy

Sowing annuals is a flexible way to provide a food source for pollinators as you can vary the mix each year based on which flowers are most popular with the insects. A few of my favourite pollinator-friendly annuals include: borage, calendula, Cerinthe major, snapdragon and rudbeckia.

5. Avoid chemicals

A re-useable slug trap can be used again and again
Image: Defenders slug trap from Thompson & Morgan

With increasing evidence about the effects of chemicals on wildlife, especially insects, we now know how important it is to avoid chemical control in the garden.

Use physical methods to control unwanted pests like squashing or dislodging aphids with jets of water, or using copper tape and wool pellets to discourage slugs. Try biological solutions like nematodes for slugs, vine weevils and thrips. Encourage ladybirds into your garden to eat aphids rather than reaching for chemical sprays. As Alys Fowler recently wrote in The Guardian: “these are chemicals that silence the soil.”

6. Think seasonally

Michaelmas daisies provide a stunning food source right through until late October
Image: Aster novi-belgii ‘Dandy’ from Thompson & Morgan

Pollinators need food sources from early spring into late autumn, so plant with the seasons in mind. Spring flowering perennials such as lungwort, cowslips, honesty and flowering currant are ideal early nectar sources and autumn stalwarts like Michaelmas daisies, dahlias and sedum offer food when many other flowers have faded.

7. Create a herb garden

Plant herbs in pots on a patio or balcony if you don’t have a large garden
Image: pixfix

Planting herbs in a sunny spot is sure to bring in the pollinating insects. My lavender is covered with bees and butterflies in the summer months, while the chives, marjoram and thyme all attract pollinating insects and provide me with harvests for salads, soups and pizza.

8. Make a mini-meadow

Contain your mini meadow in a raised bed if you prefer a bowling green style lawn
Image: Dave Head

One of the most exciting projects we’ve undertaken in the garden this year is to leave a small strip of lawn long and plant wildflower plugs to create a mini-meadow. Bare patches of ground can be sown with a meadow seed mix, but areas of long grass should be planted with wildflower plugs or container-grown plants. We can’t wait to see what pollinating insects are attracted to our mini-meadow later in the year.

By putting nature at the heart of gardening, we can enjoy the beauty of plants and animals working together in healthy ecosystems, knowing that our gardens are contributing to the wellbeing of the living planet that we all inhabit.

Nic Wilson

Nic Wilson is a writer, garden designer and Garden Media Guilds Awards nominee (Best Blog, 2018). She enjoys growing flowers and unusual fruit, vegetables and herbs, and loves to encourage nature into the garden. She also blogs at dogwooddays.

http://www.dogwooddays.net