Our gardening blog covers a wide variety of topics, including fruit, vegetable and tree stories. Read some of the top gardening stories right here.
Propagation, planting out and cultivation posts from writers that know their subjects well.
The winter gardens at Haddon Hall, Derbyshire, are just one of the hundreds of gardens to visit in the UK
Here’s your chance to take a stroll around some fabulous gardens without leaving the comfort of your home. We’ve scoured the web to come up with some intrepid garden adventurers – bloggers who like to get out and about – read on to find out where they’ve been.
All the way from South America, rather like Paddington Bear, comes my new favourite vegetable, Yacon, Smallanthus sonchifolius, distantly related to Jerusalem artichokes and carrying with it a host of intriguing culinary possibilities.
Yacon tubers form underground beneath a robust, leafy plant, slightly reminiscent when dug of large baking potatoes, but that is where the similarity ends. Yacon, meaning ‘water root’ in the Inca language, has flesh that is juicy, slightly sweet and yielding, with a flavour reminiscent of pears, or melons, with a hint of celery. In fact in its home country, this beguiling tuber is used in fruit salads as well as vegetable dishes.
A most exciting feature of Yacon is the super sweet syrup that can be extracted from it, containing an indigestible sugar, inulin. In effect the delicious toffee-tasting syrup is virtually calorie free, does not raise blood sugar, and so both tubers and sweet syrup are suitable for diabetics. The inulin in yacon syrup also has great benefits for the bacteria in the gut where it is said to aid digestion and boost the immune system. These health benefits have lead to yacon becoming a major crop, especially in the US where most of the syrup extraction takes place.
Yacon is a tender perennial plant, therefore with a little TLC, once you have your first plant, it should be with you forever; in fact its cultivation and care are very much like dahlias, so if you grow dahlias, yacon will be a cinch! It is rarely troubled by any pests or diseases, easy and willing to grow, but does however need a long growing season, the tubers bulking up in the late autumn, to be dug in mild years just before Christmas, in advance of any penetrating ground frost.
To start off, either buy rooted cuttings in the spring or get a division from someone already growing yacon. I usually treat my stored crowns like dahlias, starting them off in the greenhouse until shoots appear. At that point I divide into individual plants and pot up, before growing them on for planting out in May in a sheltered sunny spot, when all danger of frost has passed.
Yacon does appreciate a rich, fertile growing medium with plenty of well rotted manure and compost, deeply incorporated into the soil. Cultivating the soil to a good depth before planting greatly helps the process of lifting the crop in the autumn, otherwise the main tubers can break off and stubbornly remain in the ground.
Once planted out, a lush and leafy plant will quickly develop to a height of up to 2 metres, with small orange yellow flowers in the late summer. If things are going to plan, the burgeoning tubers will start to raise the soil circling the crown of the plant around September / October time
Leaving harvesting as late as possible will give the most cropping potential. When the moment arrives, usually when the top growth has been blackened off by the first air frost, cut back the remaining stems to about 10 cm and dig up the crown consisting of the bulky storage tubers (the crop), plus small propagation roots, or ‘buds’ growing just under the surface. The crowns for next year’s plants are stored much like dahlias for the winter in a cool but frost-free place where they won’t dry out.
The big tubers, carefully snapped from the crown, are crunchy, sweet and refreshing immediately — after washing and peeling can be eaten just like a carrot — but they do have the potential to become sweeter if left out in the sun for a few days. Only undamaged tubers can be stored for several months in paper or hessian sacks, much like potatoes, in a frost-free garage or shed. Any damaged tubers should be used immediately or made into syrup.
Crunchy yacon is a delicious and different addition to savoury salads — try substituting the apple in Waldrof salad with diced yacon, or combine grated carrots, yacon ‘sticks’ and sliced celery with a grain mustard vinaigrette — in fact it absorbs dressings and sauces of all kinds very readily, making it a tasty vehicle for other flavours. In the Peruvian tradition of ‘salpicon’ (fruit salad), versatile yacon can also make a delightful fruit dessert when chopped and added to your choice of pineapple, melon, papaya or mango, dressed with fresh orange juice. If used raw, the flesh of yacon will discolour, much like an apple, so after peeling and preparing, sprinkle immediately with a little dilute lemon juice, or dressing, to preserve its attractive white colour. Alternatively, for a hot dish, yacon can be roasted with other root vegetables tossed with olive oil, balsamic vinegar and herbs, or even just simply steamed.
Once you have grown enough yacon to have some spare you can think about extracting the sweet liquid using a food processor — about 12 kgs makes a litre of the precious syrup. Simply wash and peel the tubers in batches then whizz them up thoroughly; place in a large pan and simmer down gently at about 103 C until a delicious dark brown syrup is formed. This sweet liquid is wonderful on porridge, or has a great affinity with cocoa when making ‘guilt-free’ chocolate treats!
Phillippa Lambert is a landscape designer based on the Isle of Wight at a unique site in the Undercliff of the Island — a favoured microclimate sheltered by enormous south facing cliffs. In 2002 Phillippa and Stephen Lambert came across the ‘lost’ gardens of a Victorian mansion dating back to the 1820s, managed to acquire part of the site, including the walled garden and ornamental lake, and have since worked on their restoration. The result is not an ‘expert’ garden and does not try for technical perfection in any sense. ‘Make do and mend’ is the keynote — most plants being raised from seed or cuttings— and self-sufficiency is the motivation for all the growing in the walled garden. In essence, this site goes back to the philosophy of ancient gardens in sustaining the body as well as the soul. Read more at Lakehouse Design.
No need for acres of rolling allotments to grow flowers and produce!
Image: Claire Gregory, Wikimedia Commons
You don’t need a small holding, an allotment, or even a garden to grow your own fresh flowers and food these days. Enterprising urban gardeners are making the most of windowsills, balconies and wasteland to grow theirs. City gardeners are growing sustainable food and home-grown flowers, while also making our grey towns greener, more pleasant places to live.
If you are looking for inspiration on how to create your own city garden, here are ten of the best UK urban gardening Instagram accounts to follow.
Hello Gardeners,
There are many things I look forward to in November, bonfire night, my Mum’s birthday, occasional Black Friday Deals, Cyber Monday, and even Mo-vember when the men in our office would compete all month with each other to grow the best moustache, and be sponsored by the rest of the workforce to raise money for prostate cancer research. But the one thing I didn’t look forward to was an empty greenhouse. So this year, I thought I’d have a go at overwintering more than just a few delicate plants, tubers, strawberries, and kale or onion. Only, it’s all gone a little bit wild.
Seedlings Galore!
My intention was to set off a few seeds, with the hope that they would germinate before the cold weather set in – that said, I wanted the seedlings to be big enough to be transplanted into 2-3 inch pots so that they could put down a good root system and then become more leafy in early spring. The seedlings had other ideas. They were so happy to be placed in warm autumnal compost that they grew exceptionally fast. Last month I transplanted the bigger babies and placed them in the cold frame to calm down. All was going well until, suddenly the cold frame was too small, the weather had turned to biting winds and heavy downpours meaning they could no longer be moved to their final growing positions. What the dickens was I now going to do with all the plants that I had grown?
To be honest this has been the best Autumn for me in gardening terms ever. Looking back over the last three years of my Autumn posts I have noticed that we are having similar mild temperatures, little frosts, but biting winds, that sometimes turning into damaging gales. As with previous years, slugs seem to invade my greenhouse at this time of year, more than Spring. Sneaking in to munch on fresh seedlings. Also, this time last year I was banned from gardening because of my chemotherapy so, maybe it’s just a case of truly appreciating the greenhouses more, and choosing to be in them regardless of the weather.
So this month I have been in The Office transplanting Old English (Orange) marigold, Snow Princess Calendulas, Malva Moschatas, Larkspur, cornflowers, Nasturtium, Radish,Turnip, Heleniums and Radish. I still need to do the Amaranthus, but I ran out of pots. Then when I transplanted them, they grew like crazy in the mild weather.
I’m still waiting for the foxgloves, Knifophias, liatris, and grasses as well as the hyacinths. I lost the two white lavender cuttings,I tried to rescue from the garden centre.
The tiny single leaf cutting I took from my Christmas cacti in the spring has grown threefold. He will be brought into the house in early December where he will live until it’s time to give him as a present to an unsuspecting relation or friend.
Tomato ‘Yellow Stuffer’
Joy of joys, I still have a yellow stuffer tomato growing with a few ripening fruits. I am trying to beat my own record of having a tomato from an unheated greenhouse in December. I really hope I can achieve this. I wonder if there is a record for this? I am sure I read somewhere that tomatoes are perennial, but that as growers we treat them as annuals. Have you heard this? I’m going to experiment with my current plant – though I’m not holding out much hope, you can bet your bottom dollar that as soon as I write this, it will either succumb to blight, frost or just die back to annoy me.
The other indoor border plants are showing no signs of going dormant for the winter. These plants never get slug attacked. But then again the cacti and Aloes are spiky, the money tree is woody and maybe the houseplants don’t taste great.
I need to give the greenhouse a good sweep out and tidy up a set of staging, which is now mostly holding seed germination trays, string, hand tools, solar lights, and other gardening paraphernalia. I need to do this on a fairly dry day so I can lay stuff on the grass without getting soaked.
The Money Tree
Meanwhile in Ty Mawr the spent tomatoes, aubergines,amaranths and marigolds have been cleared away. All done by Mark as due to my heart failure, I’m not allowed to lift heavy or repetitive loads or dig. The shelves are full of dahlias drying off to be wrapped in newspapers for the winter. As well as the spider plant, three baby money plants, again for unsuspecting relatives or friends, a basket of winter heathers and cyclamen from a dear friend, and random bits and bobs like spare secateurs, string and scissors.
The left and back have been dug over, but the canes and wire framework has been left for next year’s fruits. However, one of my T&M aubergines is still standing in the back border on account of it being absolutely tiny and hardly any bigger than when it got transplanted there in early summer. It’s now going to be another experiment to see if it can overwinter in an unheated greenhouse. This little plant never gave me any fruits, so I’m hoping the fact that it’s established before any other food stuff goes in next year, it may turn out to be early fruiting and the most tasty.
The right border has 2 snail munched pepper plants that appear to have gone dormant. Again in my madness, I’m going to see if they will last out the winter. Next to it is the purple nicotiana that insists on pushing up more flowers – although it is starting to get a bit droopy. A chilli pepper plant that is still only about two foot high yet continues to produce red hot chillies – albeit rather late in the year. If I remember correctly the chillies don’t usually die off until December with me, so who knows, it may be chillies and turkey on Christmas Day.
The onions have slowed down their growth, but look ok. They have been joined by a turnip that the slug missed last month.
Planted Greenhouse Border
Then in my infinite wisdom (sarcasm is such a low form of wit…) I asked Mark if he would help me put at least small 60 pots of plants from The Office into the newly dug borders. Which roughly translated as” Mark, will you put these plants in the soil, while I stand about looking like I know what I am doing, and not making a huge mistake when they all drop their seeds and you have to dig out flowers from fruit next year please?”
Then I made him put some in the right border too, just to make use of the sparsely populated soil.
I’m trying to convince myself it will be okay! On the plus side I will have a spring filled greenhouse of black cornflowers intermingled with bright orange marigolds. Both plants will attract bees which in turn will pollinate my fruits. The plants will also make the stems of tomatoes and aubergines look pretty and colourful,and give off a beautiful scent. They may also help with deterring pests.
On the negative, I may accidentally attract a colony of slugs. I may have planted the flowers too late in the year and they may not get enough root establishment to see them through the cold weather – although each plant was very pot bound and could no longer support its leaves due to the rapid growth. And finally I may end up wishing I never put flowers in the food greenhouse as they now grow like weeds. Only time will tell.
Lastly the cold frame is still full with foxgloves, violas, marigolds, larkspur and cornflowers. I don’t think there is time before the first frosts to put them in winter pots, so,they will stay there until spring.
Still Flowering!
Over the next few days, I am hoping to ask Mark to dig up the rest of the dahlias, and cut back the strawberries. We need to move the geraniums and begonias into one of the greenhouses to keep warm. The raspberry canes have been cut, we need to move s plum tree, and cut back the shasta daisies the Gladiola stems and the spent hollyhocks. Believe it or not the grass also needs cutting too.
I’m still off sick at the moment and although I feel so much better than before, I still get hit with unexpected fatigue as well as feel the cold so much more. I don’t have the energy that I used to, nor the strength or stamina. But what I do have is the passion to learn more and more each day, the need to feel the sun/wind/rain on my face, the love for gardening and wildlife. If nothing else I have found out that nothing can make me more happy than being able to play in the mud once again.
Until next time.
Happy Gardening,
Love Amanda xx
My name is Amanda and I live in Pembrokeshire with my fiancé and our garden is approximately 116 meters square. I want to share with you my love for gardening and the reasons behind it, from the good to the bad and ugly. I want to do this for my own personal pleasure. If you would like to take the journey with me then please read my blogs and share with me your gardening stories.
The most colourful blooms
Image: shutterstock
If you’re into flowers, we’ve got a treat in store for you. We’ve scoured the web for brilliant blogs by writers who love to grow them, and brought them all into one place for you.
You’ll find bloggers who create stunning cut flower arrangements from their own gardens, give us the lowdown on what makes the perfect border, and show us how to collect and store seeds for next year’s blooms.
Everything you ever wanted to know about flower horticulture, right here.
Today I’ve spent time sorting out the winter bedding from the greenhouse which are in need of transplanting into the herbaceous borders.
The Stocks ‘Most scented mix’ and the Polyanthus ‘Crescendo’ have been desperate to be planted, out growing their nursery pots so I cleared areas for them and cut back some of the perennial plants.
Our beds are plagued by Bindweed, this weed is a real pain, left to its own devices, it grows quickly, climbing up the nearest plant and choking it.
I try not to use much spray any more, but this time of the year (when not cold and icy) and spring is perfect to dig it out. Even the smallest piece left in will regenerate. I actually find it quite therapeutic and collect as many pieces as I can.
In between planting my plugs, now garden readies, I have put some more Alliums using my trusty Wolf Garten bulb planter.
It’s so easy to use, my general rule of thumb with planted bulbs is, whatever the size of the bulb, the hole needs to be double that size. The bulb planter has measurements on the side. Simply turn the planter into the soil with a twist, lift out the core of soil held inside the planter, then place the bulb in the hole, roots down! and then replace the core by gently squeezing the top.
The Phlomis russeliana, (Turkish sage) I leave in the borders and cut back in the spring, as the old seed heads look great with a dusting on frost and gives the birds somewhere to perch. The foliage is lovely too.
After going on my walk of the garden, firstly I could smell my favourite winter flowering plant, Viburnum x bodnantense ‘Dawn’, it’s a real beauty, it flowers on bare stems and gives that sweet fragrance as you walk past. It is a must for any garden in my opinion, adds height to borders and winter interest.
The Fatsia japonica also was in flower, attracting any little insects that may be around. Its glossy dark green leaves really are something at this time of year, stunning!
Anyway, back to getting outside while the sun is shining and it’s relatively warm!
One of my earliest memories; helping my Mum and Dad weed the veggie plot and collecting chicken eggs from the chooks at the end of the garden. I grew up on a farm as a child and always had my own piece of land to grow and learn with, so I suppose its in the blood!
In my mid twenties, I re trained in Horticulture (Professional Gardening ANCH) and set up my own Gardening business working for clients in the Suffolk/Essex area. For the last thirteen years I’ve had the pleasure of working on a private twenty five acre estate tending to the grounds.
In 2016, I joined the team at Thompson and Morgan in the Customer Care department.
Also season ticket holder at Ipswich Town Football Club!!
How does your indoor garden grow?
Image: shutterstock
Houseplants are back in fashion. Just look at Instagram for proof. Among the enviable snaps of interiors, fashion and food, you’ll now find millions of posts on indoor gardening. There’s a new generation of urban horticulturalists busy transforming urban homes into lush indoor jungles, and sharing beautiful photos of their work.
So if stunning plant images, green interior inspiration, and expert plant-care advice sound like your bag, here are nine of the best houseplant instagrammers to follow.
Excuse my ignorance but until our recent visits to Cyprus I had no idea just how close to the Middle East it was, and how that impacted on its flowers. Plants that we treat as annuals here grow into shrubs and trees over there! Lantana: neighbour Anne nurses her cherished lantanas over the winter like delicate invalids, but Over There they grow into huge hedges with stems as thick as your fingers. The collective fool’s errand of trying to grow lavender successfully in the clay soil of the Hampstead Garden Suburb (henceforth to be referred to as The Suburb) is in deep contrast with the robust dense aromatic shrubs thriving in the thin stony soil of the Med. When visiting mountainside Monastery Neophytos we were captivated by the sunken courtyard garden, viewed from its ancient cloisters. Colour and vigour on a grand scale. Huge clumps of ginger and canna lilies, brugmansias growing into trees, Ali Baba pots of bougainvillaea and oleander, all surrounded by characteristic *Cypress trees. And the roses! We shouldn’t be surprised by their presence amongst all this exotica, considering their origins:
The first known paintings of a rose are actually frescoes, the earliest example of which was discovered in Crete around 1600 B.C.
Crusader Robert de Brie is often given credit for bringing the Damask rose from Persia to Europe sometime between 1254 and 1276. It takes its name from Damascus in Syria.
(*As to the reason why its Cypress trees and not Cyprus trees, I just don’t want to know.)
Bearing in mind that this is a gardening blog, I shall make my next paragraph brief: Second only to the flora, Cyprus means Cats to me. Cats at Naomi’s apartment complex, cats around your ankles at bars and restaurants, and above all, due no doubt to the significant British ex-pat community, cat sanctuaries, the largest of which Tala Cat Sanctuary, run by two Brits, has at present over 750 cats. For those of you feline phobics I make no apologies for including a photo of feeding time, a frenzy reminiscent of piranha fish! There is a tenuous link to horticulture here – feral cat communities thrive in the shelter of oleander and lantana hedges planted in raised beds all over the island!
And so to our return. I had imagined that autumn would have turned to winter in our absence and that I would be able to run amok with the secateurs, cutting everything back. I’m tired, I wish everything would die so that I can come indoors and have a rest! But what do I find? Salvias in full flower, a rainbow of colours; no way was I going to dig them up, having waited so long for their finest hour. Leaves still stubbornly sticking to their branches so no point raking until they are all down. Ergo, no chance of applying mulch to borders yet. (How daft are we? We rake off leaves then apply mulch. Why not just leave leaves to rot? Looks messy. Expensive intensive counterintuitive step!)
Still, there’s plenty to do in the meantime. In the Control Room (aka greenhouse) the salvia, fuchsia and penstemon cuttings I took last month are flourishing in their propagator (as is the electricity bill.) I’ve been so encouraged by my success that I have taken cuttings of coleus Campfire, and, fingers crossed, so far so good. I suppose now that the aforementioned cuttings are sprouting new leaves that means they’ve rooted, so I need to pot them on now, do I? Or do I wait until spring? Decisions, decisions!
And I shall not be idle outside either. (Why not? Please, can I be idle soon?) For the two large terracotta pots flanking the rustic arch into the fernery (now doesn’t that sound grand) I have bought a pair of cornus Alba Sibirica and half a dozen ophio-watsit black grasses to surround them. Now I come to think of it, some white bulbs would make a good contrast so I might just have to go to the nursery again; what a hardship! In the two black planters outside the front door I’ve planted Madonna tulips, Pueblo, Minnou and Falconet species narsissi, topped off with evergreen ferns and white cyclamen. Quite uncharacteristically tasteful for me.
Last Christmas I treated myself to six T&M hyacinth Midnight Mystic bulbs for a festive display in our front porch. Having carefully lifted them after flowering, I transferred them to the greenhouse to dry off, finally removing their dead foliage and roots ready for storage. I must have got bored or distracted because there they sat in a 6” plastic pot under the staging all through the rest of this year until I accidentally found them when tidying up in October! Still, they felt firm enough so I potted them up in shallow terracotta bulb pans and put them in a dark cupboard for a couple of weeks, and hey presto, they produced shoots! Now happily ensconced in the porch once again, they are sprouting away with visible buds. Amazing resilience!
There are some strange combinations going on in the borders right now, no doubt due to Mother Nature’s seasonal confusion: Late summer flowering Salvia Black & Blue with early spring flowering Coronilla valentina glauca ‘Citrina’ (or Bastard Senna – who knew?) It’s mortal outside but with no frosts and plenty of bright sunshine I feel like the grim reaper pulling up the annual container displays on the patio.
And whilst we talking of odd weather conditions, don’t ever moan to me about the vagaries of the British weather. Whilst In Cyprus it was too hot for me to sit in the sun during the day, but as soon as the sun went down, out came my suede fur lined jacket (travelling attire – I come from a bygone generation who still dress up to travel)) for evening excursions!
And as one of our favourite celebrated gardeners would say: whatever the weather, enjoy your garden.
Caroline Broome has been gardening for more than 20 years. Having passed the RHS General Certificate, she has since developed her East Finchley garden into a “personal paradise” that she and her husband invite the public to visit each year via the National Garden Scheme. Learn more about our contributor using T&M’s ‘Meet the experts’ page.
Actually it’s been nearly a year since I last wrote a blog. This year has been an eventful one for me, not only in my home life but in my gardening life too.
In June this year I decided that my gardening business was no longer giving me the satisfaction (or the financial comfort) that I had when I first started. So after many attempts at job applications to anyone and everyone and kept being told I didn’t have what they were looking for or I had too many qualifications just not in the right areas I came across a job advert for a Gardener at my local, private residence hall on the North Norfolk Coast. It’s a place I’ve walked around many times and always admired the six acre walled garden but could only dream of working there. Needless to say I applied and I spent a long while writing a covering letter about how much I loved the gardens and the park and how I came to be in the Horticultural profession.
I was lucky enough to land myself an interview and a week later I went back for a second interview as they had whittled it down to two of us. I was really doubting myself that I would get the job because the other candidate was a lot older than me and had already been working on other estates of a similar nature. Luckily though they couldn’t choose between the two of us and they ended up taking both of us on. I started late July this year and I have loved every minute of it! It has taught me many new things already. Not just about gardening but about gardeners ourselves.
There are 7 of us on our team, myself being the only female and rather lacking in height compared to the lads, but each of us has a different strength. My boss, DW, the head gardener, is a veg man. Like me, he got his love for gardening from his grandfather. He showed him how to grow veg and DW told me a story of how he helped his grandad one day tying his runner beans up. His grandad said to him ‘you’re doing it wrong’ to which DW asked why. He had twisted the stem the wrong way around the cane and beans, as many of you will know, wrap themselves a certain way around the cane because of geotropism. An invaluable piece of knowledge to be passed down.
Then there’s the manager of the walled garden. He ran a nursery with his parents before moving to the hall and he is a people person. He doesn’t have any interest in veg because ‘why would you want to put all that effort into growing something that another animal is going to eat?’ (we have a slight problem with pigeons, pheasants, and rabbits not to mention the cabbage white on the brassicas). But S loves nothing more than to get stuck in with our volunteers and re-shape the future of the garden and seeing plants thrive in the beds.
T is a more organic gardener and this winter is going to be implementing a ‘no-dig’ bed using his own compost made from the shredded plant material from the walled garden and leaves off the estate. He grows veg too and has had a very successful year with onions, carrot, chard and varieties of squash, with the latter three still producing good crops. He knows his stuff about ornamentals too and always has a thirst for more knowledge.
We also have DB on the team who loves nothing else but grass. He doesn’t really care for flowering plants (only in his own garden but shhh that’s a secret) and has had an amazing time this last month with a vertislitter aerating all the lawn areas on the estate. I drew a classic picture of a clump of grass with a seed head one day on the bottom of his mug and he said I had drawn annual rye grass (Poa annua). DB has been asked by members of the public if the lawns he maintains by the corporate function room are in fact real or astro turf because they look too good!
DH likes to do the mowing and care in the other public areas of the estate such as the village, industrial complex and the pub. He takes great pride in what he does and is even re-instating the bowling green in the village with his favourite piece of machinery being a flail mower that is used on the steep hill to cut the meadow like grass up at the estate church.
Now P (the other new employee alongside my self) doesn’t know much about flowers but is a machinery guy. He and DB share the mowing and they also have a mutual love of mole hunting (another pesky pest problem). He knows a bit about trees too but also shares one of DB’s passions of creating foods and drinks with the produce that comes from nature.
Lastly onto me. You already know a little bit of my gardening preferences but I generally love all things gardening. I get excited when cuttings I’ve taken have shot, I love the idea of producing my own food, I always want to know more about any plant that is a bit quirky and will try my hand at any different gardening techniques such as Bonsai (not very successful), topiary, landscaping and making my own juice from fruits. I do also enjoy a good grass cut every now and again. Seeing those perfectly alternating lines in the grass gives me huge satisfaction.
My new job has made me realise that us gardeners are much like plants – no two are the same yet we all have a common interest. So what type of gardener are you?
Smile,
Lesley.
P.s. I’ve been given the task of learning about all things Fig and how to get them to fruit so if you have any tips or secrets please let me know!
I’m a 23 year old female horticulturalist. I studied at Easton College for two years until June 2014 and became self employed providing garden care and design in North Norfolk. I currently care for around 20 gardens and have now achieved a few designs and a small landscaping project.
I am passionate about getting young people, especially primary schools, involved in gardening again. I have a project running to do with children’s gardening, so if you’d like to know more please get in touch! I began because of spending so much time in the garden with my granddad as a child. I was also a member of my primary school’s environment club.
I am a fan of Michael Perry and James Wong and I love finding out about edible flowers and how to live more independently from my own garden.
Flowers are the fruits of many gardeners’ labours
You can’t beat time spent gardening, but even the most enthusiastic of growers need a little downtime. Here are nine of our favourite flower garden blogs – reading to enjoy over a well-earned cuppa and a biscuit.
