Search - Articles

was unkempt to the point of dereliction. Even when my immediate neighbour poisoned his entire back garden down to brown London clay to eradicate the nose-high false-oat grass, I could still see the bramble clumps in the next garden up the road. Over the back

, the serrated leaf stalks were pretty hard to handle) and my son and I heaved the pot onto the lawn to repot the palm. The deal was that, in return for his muscle power, he would have the old pot to grow his banana palm in. We only just managed to move it onto

through the windows of our log cabin (modern not rustic, and complete with TV, 2 bathrooms and air conditioning) and announced "Daddy, there's a pony on the lawn".The pony turned out to be a large elk, one of a herd of about ten females and young that had

in such ghastly conditions? To fossick around on either border or lawn will cause more damage than good. You could tidy the shed or do some useful work in the greenhouse, but some days are too miserable even for that.Sometimes it's OK to say "hang it all

My lawn is bone dry. I keep putting off watering it because it's autumn for goodness sake and it should rain soon. It's looking a bit brown, but I know it will recover fine with the first precipitation. The clouds, however, tenaciously hang

, but the land tips steeply down to the sea presenting the perfect soil-warming angle to the sun.I think we are the first residents of the bungalow this year and the garden has been recently 'tidied' i.e. savagely cut, mown, and cleared. The pampas grass tussock

they are navel-high grass doing fierce battle with brambles. And I'm very thankful for them.I'm really pleased at the wildlife I see every day in my own back garden. There is always something going on out there, and new things are constantly turning up. The last

will be completely starkers, while another is just turning, so the chore of collection seems endless. Any leaves that fall on borders are left there, but we rake leaves from the paths and lawn (they smother the grass), adding them to the compost heap

of long grass around the edges of the lawn (which has no straight lines or clipped edges). I’m also far too soft with my frogs. When I cut down my tomato haulms the other week, I found five frogs snuggled together in the grow bag. I couldn’t bear to turf

, and you can also buy plastic grids, under which grass and other low-growing plants can grow. Any paved areas can be sloped gently to direct water into a border, lawn, hedge or tree, and you can also use materials that allow rainwater to penetrate