Search - Articles

garden without life? There are already too many public spaces filled with hanging baskets 'planted' with fake flowers. I stand at train stations and lament the sight of bees and hoverflies wasting energy working out that their search for food is in vain

, and these too, contorted to grip each other, forming first a tight knot, then expanding into a broad round flower shape. This is the point at which each exudes sperm into the other. Slugs are hermaphrodites, their bodies containing both male and female organs

of the last flowers.Anyway, I tell you all this not only to entertain you with tales of my day but also to demonstrate the fact that this garden teems with wildlife. Apart from those mentioned we have birds a-go-go, the odd hedgehog and there is a grass snake

grotesque.A smallish tree reaching only about 20m tall, the field maple has a bark as fissured as the face of W.H. Auden, with a slightly corky texture. The flowers are nothing much to write home about, being little greeny numbers that turn up at the same

!Ever fancied breeding your very own new colours of hellebore? Carol explained how, making it look remarkably easy. That's another thing I'll enjoy doing when mine come into flower soon.No gardening programme would be complete without, in Carol's words

-forgiving whiteness has gone and left behind it … well, a lot of soggy, mucky chaos. Hedges are staggering slightly after supporting all that weight and my flower borders look about as attractive as roadside ditches. I tend to leave my herbaceous plants standing

as the plants start to flower.The spinach I'm growing in troughs as a salad crop, as you need to grow buckets of it for cooking and I don't have the space. Spinach is also prone to leaf miner fly, which bores holes into the leaves and lays eggs, so picking

with bell cloches for my courgette plants has paid off. Planted before my recent trip to the Canaries and Madeira, the plants are now covered with flowers, and this morning I spotted the first tiny courgettes forming. I can’t wait for the harvest.I’ll plant

, bumblebees prefer to nest in messy gardens (although they will feed anywhere with suitable flowers), so I want to give nest-searching queens the illusion that I don't garden at all. The grass will grow long, the borders will rot into themselves

and have been fascinated by it ever since. It is not a friendly plant - in fact it is quite hostile when you get in close. The stubbly leaves can reach a diameter of about six feet and are supported by thick, thorny stems. The flowers are odd