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Regular watering is essential for summer bedding, vegetables, pots and hanging baskets as well as newly-planted trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants. Our tips show how to water your plants properly so that they can make best use of it and so that we

of controlling the little blighters, except fencing off the whole garden and creating a sort of bunny no-go zone. That's not a simple exercise unless your garden is flat and unencumbered by the usual hedges, trees, shrubs etc. Any fence needs to be at least 600mm

to and fro from their home in a thicket of shrubs to the feeder, some waiting their turn as others fed. They were hard to count, but the most at any one time was eight; there were probably more. The tits came and went, blackbirds scurried around on the ground

(especially the miniaturised varieties) look ridiculous, but there are always exceptions. This is one: it has slender leaves with white undersides and cones to die for.Number four: Amelanchier canadensis. Some may consider this a shrub and they would be right

A few weeks ago I wrote about trees for small gardens. Among the comments (well, to be honest, 33% of the comments) was a request from Daphne for very, very small trees - "very small being up to three metres".Tricky. Three metres is barely a shrub

... round shrubs, roses and flowers, along the base of the hedge, around fruit trees and bushes, and over the veg plot. Beans get a good, deep mulch of compost to help conserve soil moisture, too, but it's not just water retention that mulching is good for

leaved shrub for a sheltered corner. I first saw this at the marvellous Stone House Cottage Gardens. The flowers are exquisite, like an underwater pincushion (and if my new garden is somewhere warm I will get fruit as well).Persicaria polymorpha

Europe with planted shrubs. A friend of mine went looking for them through the dark streets of night-time Chelsea. He was exploiting a little-known fact that these and many other strange critters fluoresce under ultraviolet light. Using a small hand

for the 75 different species of plant named after him, including an entire genus, the banksias. These are evergreen shrubs, found mostly in Australia, with wonderful conical flowerheads. Banks is also commemorated by Rosa banksiae  (named after his wife

over trees and soil in search of overwintering pests around the garden. Welcome them in with food and water, provide them with hedges and shrubs for shelter, and they'll reward you by helping control unwanted pests. What's a pest to you is food for them