Search - Articles

Could garden plants reduce your winter heating bills? Some interesting research has been conducted at the University of Sheffield and by other organisations around the world that highlights the value of trees and plants surrounding buildings

I don’t think my garden could look any worse. The borders I left to rot into themselves have tumbled all over the lawn, the patio is covered in pigeon poo, and there’s now a temporary cardboard compost bin outside my back door because the real bin

right away.3. Insulate outside tapNot only must I turn off the stopcock to my garden tap to isolate the water supply (mine is almost hidden behind pipework under the kitchen sink), but I must wrap insulation material round the brass tap itself. Again, I

Yesterday at a Gardeners' Question Time recording it was amazing to hear that Eric's Cumbrian plot had only had 5cm of snow. Not so here in Hampshire. The snow is 45-60cm deep and the icicles more than 1m long!What have I been up to during the snowy

Has the snow been a good or bad thing for our gardens? Well, probably a bit of both, but I do live in hope that the cold weather has helped kill off a few garden pests. We've all had our fair share of snow over the past couple of weeks, with varying

I am not to have any plants yet in my garden. While a thick layer of snow can insulate plants from extremely low temperatures, its weight can cause branches to break. Then frozen ground prevents roots from taking up water, and plants can die from

warmth for early sowings. Of course I'll be keeping heat to a minimum, and insulating the greenhouse with bubble polythene to reduce heat loss, but my environmental conscience keeps asking me the same question.Looking at things another way, I wonder if it

unheated greenhouse before the temperature drops too much. In winter the worms can die of cold and the contents of the bins can even freeze solid. Wormeries don’t need to be put in a heated place; it’s enough to avoid freezing conditions. Some gardeners

’re dead, but just that their tops will have been knocked back. Hopefully roots in fairly dry compost, and insulated from cold, will survive and start growing next spring when conditions warm-up.My colleague Lucy on Gardeners' World magazine looked very fed

I realise that this subject may ring very few bells among the habitués of gardenersworld.com, but you find me trying to get my head around gardening in Russia. Sometimes it is interesting to think about how other gardeners in different parts