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harmed plants and did no damage to people! I'm not prepared to go that far…My job, when I'm not having a lovely time writing for you lot, is to design and make gardens for people. Sometimes this involves taking untouched or overgrown ground and turning

to be going, here are a few tips - both practical and aesthetic. I was there last week with Joe Swift and Cleve West making a film for the RHS website and we had a chance to do a bit of poking around amongst the show gardens.Tom Stuart Smith is back again

root cuttings from my mum's garden. Some didn't flower, so I'm hoping they will this year. I'm also looking forward to single plants growing into clumps, as they become established and make my garden their own.And what went wrong? I grew far too many

frosts.My garden in East London hasn't seen rain since before Christmas. We've had snow, of course, and the promise of rain - dark clouds, even a thunder storm, but no water (we did have a two minute shower last Friday but it by the time I recognised

(this is Wales after all), play host to a string quartet on the day. There are also demonstrations of coppicing, charcoal burning and yurt building. This is a two-day opening, on 11-12 June.Many villages combine their gardens in order to make a proper

I recently visited the community orchard at Haggerston Park. It makes a lovely little wildlife sanctuary amidst the concrete of built-up Hackney: all fruit trees, wildflowers and long grass. It's also home to a few ornamental plants, including pot

, leading to flooding. If every building had a green roof - be it an office block or garden bin store - much of this water would be absorbed before it even hit the ground.My shed has a tiny, steep roof, so we needed to make sure any soil that was added

.When most of the seedlings have shown up, I will evict them from the propagator and put them into the greenhouse. It’s cooler there, but frost free. I don’t just move them to make space for sowing more plants (honest!). Artificially warm conditions

on their side, or vicious dogs that will not take kindly to you wandering into their garden.Fencing is quite hard work, but relatively straightforward. Here are some important points to remember:Make sure the line is straight - you don’t want your fence

of the unbelievable quantities of rain that are making it impossible to garden, and in some instances positively treacherous to even walk.I skidded for over a metre across some wet grass the other week. My neck still clunks every time I turn my head, as if I had