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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

of soil conditioning compost or manure costs at the garden centre this spring?

to weed nicely contained beds where the soil is lovely and light, and I barely even get muddy.Laying carpet at the far end was a big mistake. I initially laid it over the soil to suppress weed growth, with the view to digging the area over later on

, but venture into the garden and you'll see another side to this menace.Get outside early on cold mornings with camera in hand and you might be lucky enough to capture images of the ephemeral ice crystal patterns and designs left by Jack Frost. They

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.

already completed the operation.Under the mulch I like to scatter something with a bit more ooomph: mulch is very good for the soil but the plants could do with some sort of fertiliser as well. I usually use blood, fish and bone which gives a good balanced

Yesterday at a Gardeners' Question Time recording it was amazing to hear that Eric's Cumbrian plot had only had 5cm of snow. Not so here in Hampshire. The snow is 45-60cm deep and the icicles more than 1m long!What have I been up to during the snowy

. The soil is saturated in many areas and, with rain continuing to fall, the air is pretty damp, too.So, what can I do about it? Well, forking in the surface covering of algae on the soil will do the trick there. The algae on the trees I can ignore. (People

the kids’ trampoline. It’s amazing how much difference the shade makes; you can feel the drop in temperature beneath the net, and the soil is noticeably damper.Sitting in the sunshine, I’m watching the confused wasps buzzing around a bowl of strawberries, a

In the words of Benny Hill: "I'll never know how a rose can smell so sweet and pure, And hold its head up high when it's standing in manure!".Old Benny cannot have been much of a gardener (a statement borne out by the fact that he lived all his life