News - Page 89
Flowering cherries all belong to the Prunus family and offer such staggering variety you’ll find one for every spot in the garden. All offer a long season of interest, with spring blossom and yellowy-orange autumn colour. Some are even at their best in winter, such as copper-barked Tibetan cherry (P. serrula) and P. x subhirtella ‘Autumnalis’, which flowers from November to February.
For spring blossom it’s hard to beat snowy white ‘Taihaku’, the great white...
Read more...
Buddleja, pulmonaria and heather are among the top plants for wildlife according to a new survey carried out by the Wildlife Gardening Forum.
Top plants for wildlife
The group asked volunteers around the country to score a wide range of garden plants. They found that butterflies were drawn to buddleja before anything else, justifying its common name of ‘butterfly bush’. Second-best for butterflies was tall, airy Verbena bonariensis. Bumblebe...
Read more...
Now is the time to start frost-tender vegetables including courgettes, cucumbers, French beans and squash. You’ll find these on sale at the garden centre in Stocksfield both as seed or as young plants, ready-grown for you. These plants are destroyed by cold weather so can’t be planted outdoors until after the last threat of frost has passed: luckily they grow at lightning speed, so it doesn’t matter that you’re starting them off later in spring.
...Read more...
Fill your garden with sweet peas for a summer full of scent and colour! You’ll find potfuls of seedlings on sale at the garden centre here in Stocksfield right now, ready to go straight into the garden at the foot of a sturdy wigwam or obelisk. Put them near a door, seat or path so you can really appreciate their simple yet delightful flowers and lovely scent.
Sweet peas
Sweet peas thrive in the open ground or in containers of rich p...
Read more...
Handsome, versatile, and in full flower in winter and early spring when there’s little else around: every garden should have a viburnum. Many of the winter flowerers are fragrant – snip a bloom-laden branch in December to bring indoors and fill the house with perfume – and some also have handsome blue, red or black berries.
Many are evergreen and all are more or less maintenance free: just trim back to size if they outgrow their space. Find them a warm, shelt...
Read more...
April showers may feature this month – but so does increasingly warm sunshine, making planting and pruning a pleasure. Here are a few of the jobs to be getting on with this month:
General tasks:
- Clean water features scrubbing off algae, fallen leaves and other debris then rinsing before refilling.
- Rake over patches of coarse grass in the lawn to raise them up before mowing so they’re cut...
Give spring bulbs a little TLC now and they’ll bounce back even better next year for an even bigger and more colourful display.
Spring Bulbs
As blooms fade, pinch or cut them out to stop the bulbs wasting energy producing unwanted seedheads. This make sure that all the plant’s energy goes back into the bulb and encourages bigger clumps to form.
The only exception is bulbs you are naturalising in long grass, like snowdrops, cro...
Read more...
Slugs and snails are back in top spot as the most-hated pest for gardeners, after a year of playing second fiddle to box tree moth. The slimy critters topped the annual RHS poll of the most asked-about pests and diseases, based on enquiries they received at their Gardening Advice Service.
Slugs and Snails
Honey fungus was named most troublesome plant disease for the 21st year running, with RHS scientists identifying...
Read more...
It’s the perfect time to lay new lawns right now as the soil starts to warm up and new grass bursts into growth. Whether you choose seed mix or turf, select a mix which is suitable for the site. Think about the amount of light reaching the area, and how much wear it is likely to get, as well as the look you want to achieve. You’ll find specialist turf and seed grass mixes to suit your requirements in our garden centre here in Stocksfield, including lawn mixes for sh...
Read more...
Plant your new potatoes now and you’ll give yourself the best chance of an early harvest. Timing your planting is a bit of a lottery as there’s always the chance of a late frost, but you can usually risk it by late March. Just in case, keep some horticultural fleece handy (you’ll find fleece at our garden centre here in Stocksfield) and throw a couple of layers over emerging foliage to protect it if the temperature drops.
Plant your tubers with the “ros...
Read more...
Sow beetroot for delicious early crops within a few weeks’ time. Beetroot are among the quickest and easiest of veg to get going in spring, and are just as happy in a roomy container as in the ground.
Sow Beetroot
Varieties include traditional purple ‘Boltardy’ and unusual striped heritage variety ‘Chioggia’, but there are lots more, including golden ones which don’t ‘bleed’: browse the seed racks here at the garden centre in Stocksf...
Read more...
Plant Asiatic lilies now for a fabulously exotic display later this summer. Asiatic lilies are among the easiest lilies to grow, and certainly the most spectacular. They tend to flower a little earlier than other lilies and include brilliantly coloured varieties in shades of copper, pink, deepest purple and pure white. For even more wow factor there are also two-tone and double types. Come over to the garden centre in Stocksfield and browse through...
Read more...