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Not everything in my garden is carefully planned, and I make no excuses for having it this way. It's a wise gardener that makes room for the unexpected, and the rewards this can bring. Leave an area of soil bare and something will grow, and while

hydrangeas, but this year they are undoubtedly pink.'Blue Wave' has always been so reliable, but now it's not living up to its name.Hydrangeas exhibit a chameleon-like characteristic, changing flower colour according to the type of soil they're growing in

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

manures, sown onto beds and borders and forming a green carpet that can be dug directly into the soil, improving its organic content. Where areas aren't required for crops or bedding for a couple of months I put the area to good use by sowing green manures

roots to grow through you can plant out the entire thing, so roots grow out into surrounding soil and the card eventually disintegrates as it decomposes.Careful planting out is important, ensuring the rim of any cardboard container sits below soil level

, with new shoots spreading outwards from the fringes. The soil they're growing in gets more impoverished as its nutrients become exhausted.So, what can be done? I do spread a good mulch of compost over the soil around them each year, and this is gradually

family home in Surrey had a massive, spreading clump of them outside the front door, where they flowered through late-summer and into autumn. They flourished despite the challenges of the site, with its very heavy but dry clay soil along the wall

hope they've discovered a few more overwintering slugs and snails.Frost will certainly have proved beneficial to my clay soil. Left roughly dug in autumn the frost will have penetrated deeply, helping to break down the clay particles and making the soil

ways. The oldest variety I grow, and the earliest to flower, is 'St Ewe', which I planted directly into my border soil. Now I wouldn't claim my clay soil is ideal for camellias, which enjoy a lime-free and water-retentive soil, but this one has

place after dandelions and horsetail), and bindweed came 2nd to dandelions in northern England. Full results of our survey of weeds and other garden problems can be found in the August 2009 issue of Gardeners' World Magazine.