Gardening Tips

Easter seems to be more and more about chocolate now, but given my surname (Cadbury) that’s probably inevitable in my case! Alongside the chocolate fest, for we happy band of gardeners it’s all about getting out into the garden, sharpening the secateurs and planning ahead. My wife and I have...

There are two obsessions that gardening induces; firstly the weather and most importantly your own garden taking over your thoughts and dreams. The weather Is it too cold, is the ground frozen or even warming up? Is it too wet, or too dry? Is it the right time to plant...

How do you feel about your garden in winter? If you look out of the window and find it dreary, uninteresting – a bit mournful, even – it’s probably because it lacks structure. Good structure is a really important component of successful garden design, and comes in a number of...

Like so many gardeners, I’m a huge fan of box. Its neat, clipped form brings classic elegance and structure all year round – especially welcome in winter, when the bones of a garden are what really matter. A dusting of frost gives a shapely group of box balls a bewitching...

For me, November is a month of mixed emotions. I struggle with the shorter hours of daylight, and the prospect of those seemingly interminable months of bleakness to come. Don’t talk to me of hygge or cosying up by the fire. I want to be out there, inspired by the...

I’m sure that you, like all good gardeners, have been constantly looking at the weather forecast for your local area, and this week it seems as though it’s getting colder. The trees are losing their leaves which have turned into beautiful hues of yellow, orange, rust and red. This is...

  We get many people enquiring about specific things at certain times of the year, and here are some of the most frequent ones and some helpful answers:   Question 1:   When will my order be delivered? Answer: Current deliveries for bare root plants should arrive by mid-November depending on what...

The quince tree (Cydonia oblonga)  has to be my favourite fruit blossom. It's not quite pink, single flowers are unusually large, five-petalled and are held proud from reflexed, pale green leaves. Stunning. Laburnum trees live up to their common name of The Golden Chain Tree right now. Their extraordinary luminous...

Alliums start flowering in mid-May and, depending on your variety, continue to do so from to the end of July with their lovely, frozen firework flowers. Alliums have become very "de jour" because their colours range from steely metallic shades to the deepest, velvety purple and because their perfect circular...

The warmth of September has kept the soil temperatures at a perfect pitch for planting potted perennials and shrubs. Autumn is quite the time to settle in fickle plants that like to bed their roots in before they have to do anything exceptional or enervating like flowering. However there is...