Search - Articles

There are many hardy and half-hardy annuals that can be grown for cut flowers. Many attract bees and butterflies and some species can be dried, for use in long-lasting displays.Sow hardy and half-hardy annuals between March and April in small pots

terracotta pot that was normally planted with bedding. Filled with loam-based John Innes compost my Nerium oleander took up residence in June, and was soon in flower. Now, I wouldn't describe its display as spectacular, but my shrub produced luxuriant stems

.Chrysanthemums are cheap, cheerful, and wonderful plants. Just when you've given up on the garden, with summer bedding displays coming to an abrupt end, along come chrysanths to provide the colourful punctuation every garden needs.I mostly use them in pots, pulling out

hyacinth produces a mini forest of stems, each carrying a small head of flower. It comes in blue, pink and white, and I'm hoping that a single bulb per pot will produce a really good display.

that are being groomed - already -  for displays at next year's RHS Flower Shows.Herbs are one of the few things that can be used the whole way through the winter. A pot of rosemary, some mint (Egyptian mint is, apparently, the most evergreen) and a bay tree

stems, Verbena bonariensis can be planted alongside a variety of different bananas, ginger lilies and bamboos.Design ideasSeeds can be sown directly in the ground in spring, or you can start them off under glass in late-winter, then pot them on to plant

until May. At least they did get planted - better late than never - and now I'm really enjoying their display.I first grew the Glory Lily about 25 years ago when I was editor of Greenhouse magazine (this was actually my first editorship after entering

bulb was planted straight away in its own 20cm pot. These were grown on in my unheated greenhouse for a few months as I watched each produce a tall stem tipped with flower buds, before I planted them out in a group. The resulting lily 'forest', pictured

Breathe deeply as you enter my sitting room this month and you’ll take in the powerful, almost intoxicating fragrance of paper-white narcissi.I planted the Narcissus papyraceus bulbs last autumn, in a glass bowl layered with gravel. All I've done

.Aeoniums are wonderfully generous succulents, as they can be propagated so readily from their rosettes by cutting them from a parent plant and pushing into pots of gritty compost to root. Many succulents are hardier than often recognised, though you need some nerve to risk