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This year I'm determined to only grow one variety of tomato. This is because my garden was overrun with tomato plants last year and I couldn't get onto my patio for growing bags and poorly staked cordons. So 2011 will see a more streamlined effort

this morning as I left the flat. The leaves of my plants look like jigsaw puzzle pieces, and I frequently sit at the table at night, watching the adults climb to the top of my patio windows and 'drop' into my large pots to do their worst.Despite the apparent

As a rule, I only grow plants that will benefit bees, moths and other pollinators. I do relax this rule, though, by growing auriculas. I do this for my partner, who loves them (even if bees don’t).We have built up quite a collection over the years, including gold- and light-centr...

Two years, I felt the need to grow a local, native plant in my garden. I gathered rosehips from a field rose at the edge of a nearby canal, soaked them in water and sowed the seed in coarse compost.The pots sat in a corner of my patio, doing nothing

and thrushes, as well as filling the feeders with seeds and peanuts. However, once again, only the pigeons are gobbling them up.The pigeons are so at home in my garden that they've started coming up to the patio door if they're hungry. I don't mind, I've plenty

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

would tell me when I'd found it, I told my colleague Kevin, as we walked round a daffodil display at a trade show. "Daffodils don't smell", he replied. But, as I found it and took in its scent, I was four again, on the damp, north-facing patio

the patio looking for worms, doesn't eat them all). I think I'll grow one plant in the bucket sludge. Moist and rich, it's bound to produce me a winner.More sunflowers will be grown against the south-facing wall in the border in regular garden soil, with a

outdoor jobs: sweep and scrub the patio.The pond is full of duckweed and not much else, so I'll remove that and find out what happened to the watercress and water forget-me-not (bounced out by bathing pigeons, probably). Then I need to top up a few pots

this frustration got me thinking about bedding.I admit to not being a huge fan of annual bedding plants, but I can see their attraction. For the gardener, they provide instant results - quick-fix solutions to gaps in borders, a tired corner, a dreary patio