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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

then you can assume that I've made a ghastly mistake and am trying to hide the outcome. If nothing else, the prunings make good compost.If you want to see what my garden looked like a month ago then tune in to Gardeners' World on BBC2 this Friday (1 August

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

150 years. It feeds on the fruits, using its stylet mouthparts to suck out the juices, in autumn moving to the berries of yew, which also grows profusely on the chalk downs.However, during the 1990s Gonocerus was found, first, at Bookham Common

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