Search - Articles

and kept below their normal height. They're not much good if you're looking for flowers, but for sheer well-cut elegance you can't really go wrong. You know the sort of thing: yew hedges with razor edges, parasols of pleached lime and frost-dusted box

in some secluded bank or hedge and make her nest away from any more human interference.At home the cats were molesting something in the long grass around the pond. A small toad was marching up the garden. We sometimes find them hiding under the sandpit

, just a mile from where I am now. The reason, I'm sure, is that it truly lives up to its other English name - hedge brown. The gardens in East Dulwich are larger than those in Nunhead, and the fences are more likely to be overgrown by creepers

you once had one stem you then have many which, depending on the variety, have different uses. Ash has always been used for arrows, sweet chestnut for fencing pales, willow for weaving and (in this case) hazel for pea sticks and hedge-laying.We drag

as a native hedging plant, but surely its time more were grown as ornamentals (with a sideline in winter liqueur production, of course). The only problem is that they self-seed and tend to spread themselves rather rapidly, but if they do grow too much

What a week we've had. It's been more like October than July and the poor old plot is looking a bit battered and bruised. I nipped there to take stock of any damage after the gale force winds last weekend, and found my brassica netting in a hedge

on a frosty day is one of the greatest pleasures. The winter is when evergreens come into their own and the frost just makes yews look even better. Hedges seem to be draped with diamonds and the shiny leaves of box glisten. There is not a great deal

and hedges so we have a large population of birds. Blue tits are very beneficial for the gardener as they feed their young on caterpillars.Talking of which, it is very easy to unwittingly overwinter caterpillars in glasshouses and polytunnels. Only the other

, for kidney problems, blood pressure and in Chinese medicine it is a digestive aid. It also provides food for many moths including the Mottled Pug, Scalloped Hazel and Brimstone.Most of us see them woven through field hedges all over the countryside in late

Since Christmas the weather has been almost universally ghastly - rain, fog, leaden skies and general Januaryness. Over the last couple of days, however, I have noticed everything change; the skies are blue and the sun is shining. In the hedges buds