Search - Articles

We try to run our house along democratic lines. This, I'm convinced, is the right way to be, but it does mean that a final decision can be difficult to reach, especially on things we all care passionately about.The scruffy, peculiar-looking apple

trees for a small garden. The current wave of interest in 'grow your own' should see even more people including fruit trees in their gardens, and the coming months are a perfect time to plant them. Last winter I made space for a 'family' apple tree

, it's the apples and pears that have been the subject of my attentions. As we know, apple trees blossom picturesquely in spring. These flowers then develop into small fruits and then, in June, the tree shrugs and loses a fair few of these (this

I am ashamed to admit that I still haven't got all my garlic in. I know the experts say I should have planted it in October or November, but I got a bit distracted by the apple harvest from a neighbour's garden, and spent all my time making jam

Parts of my garden have resembled something of a battleground this year. Why is it that all my favourite plants and crops have their very own pest to contend with? Grow lilies and you'll be hard pressed not to find lily beetle munching them. My

appears to be a change in its foodplant preference from the very restricted box tree to hawthorn, apple, honeysuckle and others. We've got a rather straggling honeysuckle trying to grow over one of our fences, but this specimen was on Clematis armandii

It's blackberry time - not those machines, without which many "suits" would feel emasculated, but fat berries swollen by rain and aching for crumble. The blackberry bramble is a weed, and the perfect example of a plant simply growing in the wrong

: there seems little point in weeding much (the nights are too cold for most annual weeds to bother with seeding themselves), why bother to tie back a sprawling plant when you are going to cut them all down anyway soon? Even the grass stops growing quite

trees that are worth looking into. Fruit trees are grown on different rootstocks and, depending on which one you choose, these regulate the eventual height of the tree - useful not just for small gardens, but also because it means that the best apples