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It has been one of those typical early spring weeks, not enough hours to do everything I want to do. The team from BBC Gardeners' World Magazine came down for a couple of days to take a series of photographs on how to raise plants from seed

cutting back this herb - it shoots off old wood, and is tolerant of hard pruning.I then moved on to the bay trees. I have two standard bay trees, both more than 20 years old. They each take a day and a half to have a full haircut. I know it removes

I'm sitting on a train as I write this, something I do more frequently than I used to, in an effort to cut back on the number of miles I drive each year. One of the best things about taking the train is being able to gaze, semi-comatose, through

(felt pen tends to run). The cress hair should appear within a week.For the grass heads, use old tights, cut in to 20cm lengths. Tie each one in a knot at one end and add a teaspoonful of grass seed. Then cram the tights full with sawdust, so the tights

its vigorous suckers (and copious amounts of seed) can easily become a problem. Each plant can cover many square metres of ground and on Colonsay (and other areas of west Scotland) it thrives on the acid soil and is taking over great swathes

, with regular deadheading, keep going until the autumn. Propagation is also quite simple: take cuttings from the non-flowering shoots in the summer.I haven't even started on alpine and annual varieties but must mention D. carthusianorum - a really good perennial

Last weekend, for the benefit of wildlife and nature conservation in south-east London, I cut down a tree. Despite their iconic status and green credentials, it is often necessary to cut down trees, and this one had plenty of reasons to go. First

have to repeat the process several times.The autumn free fall is a real bonus. Leaves rot down into gorgeous compost, so I'll make the most of my free supply. On lawns they're easy to collect. I simply raise the cutting height on my mower blades

. This is not nearly as scary as it sounds as it is simple to manage. It sends up fast-growing, very vertical shoots, with tinkling silver leaves that bustle and worry in the breeze. When one trunk gets too big you cut it down and let another take its place.

and an interesting story.The elder has always been considered a magic plant, supposed to ward off evil and provide useful protection from witches - in some parts of the world cutting down an elder may bring the wrath of some evil sprite upon you. If that is the case