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candidates like beech, grasses, roses or even completely random objects.The digital camera also comes in handy when keeping a garden diary. I have pictures of my garden spanning the depths of winter to highest summer so I can always see which bits work

perfectly in a rustic bowl of mixed leaves. Or try bittercress, that ubiquitous weed that seems to arrive as a 'free sample' with many garden centre purchases.So, whether you want delicate viola flowers in a salad or would like to try crystallising rose

to inject a note of optimism the second picture, below, is of the same area in May - so all is not lost).Now is the time start the big chop back in readiness for the spring. Over the next few weeks I will be cutting back pretty much everything, pruning roses

I love mulching, and my soil loves it too. Not that I'd admit this in public, but I think it's partly the lazy gardener in me that chooses mulching over digging - it's a far easier way to incorporate bulky organic material into soil.Yes, there's a

I think we have foxes living under our garden shed. I first noticed the scratching in the soil a week or so ago. It didn't look like very much excavation had occured and the hole didn't appear to go very far. But now we have more earth-moving going

surprised by the announcement. "A real shame to see Toby go," wrote Aaron Abbott. "He is my kind of gardener.""Why the sudden change?" asked Joe Rose. "I was just getting used to Toby and I enjoyed his style of presenting. Does this mean that the money

last week). It is a good moment to look back on the triumphs and disasters in our gardens and to make notes, so that we do not make the same mistakes again.Allow me to share a few of my best mess-ups of 2010.My first is a mistake I did make last year

looking like dog-eared lace doilies. Hostas seem to be the snack of choice for all molluscs.This problem is pretty much universal - except, it seems, at Hever Castle in Kent, the childhood home of Anne Boleyn. Hever Castle has a magnificent rose garden

. For the same price as your vase of red roses that within a week are only fit for the compost heap, you could instead grow orchids on your windowsill, which carry a succession of flowers for three months.If that wasn't enough, it will even flower again about six

I think it is time for another deeply prejudiced personal rant about my least favourite plants. Spring is, if not exactly just around the corner, then definitely packed, dressed and on its way. With the spring comes the return to our gardens