Search - Articles

would come to his hand - and to ours if we stayed still enough.After that I became a bit blasé on the subject: birds were just things that flew about and, in certain incarnations, tasted good.Today we get quite excited by the birds that visit this garden

I thought it would be interesting to use this blog as an excuse to find out more about the many slightly eccentric people who have helped make gardening as popular and exciting as it is today so this is the first in an occasional series: if anybody

Do you have an autumn clear-up in your garden? Do you cut down all your herbaceous stuff so that everything is tidy for the winter or do you leave everything until the new year? Most people nowadays leave it until later to give food for small birds

an extraordinary topiary garden with massive yews clipped into extraordinary shapes - top hats, arches, crowns, eggs, birds, Bobby Charlton's combover etc, etc. I filmed there once (for Small Town Gardens) and the head gardener gave us two top tips: always spray

for as long as possible, in order to feed the birds and give the frost something to hold on to, but there comes a time when one has to surrender to weather, nature and decay.As you can see from the picture above, that moment has, I think, arrived. (Just

In the words of Benny Hill: "I'll never know how a rose can smell so sweet and pure, And hold its head up high when it's standing in manure!".Old Benny cannot have been much of a gardener (a statement borne out by the fact that he lived all his life

as great gobbets of turf and topsoil are heaped into enormous piles and then, slowly, from the chaos, a pond emerges.I know this is very different from many people's experience of building a pond as this is a garden which is bigger than most

especially to gather the droppings (not, as in Europe, to eat the birds). In dry countries other types of manure are used as fuel.Pig manure has to be about the smelliest option but provides plenty of humus. It is better in light, sandy soils.Leather scraps