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home for their offspring. Every summer a leaf cutter bee spots the hollow canes, and uses them as a nursery to lay its eggs. Each egg is cocooned in a layer of carefully cut leaf discs. I'll spot where these have come from as I garden, where neat discs

Summer may have started late following the June drenching, but it hasn't been a complete washout. One star performer in my garden has been a wonderful new osteospermum. I haven't grown them for a few years, but Osteospermum Sunny Philip caught my

Not everything in my garden is carefully planned, and I make no excuses for having it this way. It's a wise gardener that makes room for the unexpected, and the rewards this can bring. Leave an area of soil bare and something will grow, and while

Queen Mother. Olga, the new head gardener, is just coming to terms with such an exposed garden, designed in part to provide cut flowers and produce for the house. Tall walls and dividing hedges are essential to create shelter, and new planting projects

producing a single flower per stem once a year, moth orchids produce several stems, each boasting a dozen or more exotic flowers. Yes, I know you'll find these phalaenopsis orchids everywhere now, but they offer so much more value than a bunch of cut flowers

overcoat that has now infected their foliage in my garden (anyone know any resistant varieties?).With regular deadheading and watering I'm hoping to keep my sweet peas going a little longer, generating ever-welcome cut flowers.For me it's also one

Although flowers usually steal the headlines, think how bleak a garden would look without foliage. Leaves are a vital part of every garden. Consider the contrast between the lushness of summer and the bleakness of winter, when tender plants have

With such a dull, damp and dismal start to the year, I didn't feel very motivated to venture into my garden. That all changed last Friday as I watched Carol Klein's new series, Life in a Cottage Garden, documenting her gardening year at Glebe

that have been providing interest around the garden, but this potted collection will suffer in the cold. I need to give the plants a sheltered home under cover.In past years I’ve sometimes risked keeping a few in my unheated greenhouse over winter

.Shrubs and evergreens in the surrounding garden do the same thing, reducing wind speed, cutting down on draughts, and by doing so keeping buildings warmer through winter. Some researchers claim energy consumption could be reduced by up to 25per cent, but more research