Search - Articles

. It is time to bounce into 2010 with a light step and the feeling that valleys can be crossed in a single bound.Many people will have decided that the time has come to start growing their own vegetables. All those excellent Gardeners World projects and blogs

Think of a vegetable that sums up Christmas. Easy - except that to make things a bit more difficult I am withdrawing the noble sprout from the equation. So that leaves the humble spud and the noble parsnip, and, as far as I am concerned, the latter

The world of gardening overflows with obsessions, such as giant vegetables, lawns, compost, cacti and many others.One of the most extreme gardening obsessions is the art of bonsai. I was always a bit dismissive of this particular obsession until I

this as an excuse to loaf around watching old films, but then nothing gets done.So, instead I will spend the afternoon in my mother-in-law’s greenhouse as my wife’s loyal assistant. The vegetable garden is her bailiwick, and I am there to move things and do what I

built himself from plants and hard landscape materials that he has begged and borrowed.I am not a manic vegetable grower (my wife is in charge of our kitchen gardening) but there is a very strong vegetable presence at the show. Tucked away down the end

blog to another, as they all have links that take you to yet another strand.One of the most prolific blogs is Vegplotting - the adventures of a very keen gardener and allotmenteer in Chippenham, Wiltshire. For even more hardcore vegetable growing try

that one of the most satisfying things in gardening is a well built, well maintained compost heap, but it is a bit much when people get smug about what is really just a pile of rotting vegetation. I do not claim to be an expert but what we make ends up

thinking. Even today it upsets the creationists.Another of Darwin’s works, a book not actually published until a year before his death in 1882, concerned the seemingly humble subject of earthworms. The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action

of Colonsay, Colonsay House Gardens. It is not the only garden: there are a few smaller gardens on the island - including what must be one of the most spectacularly sited vegetable gardens in the world: they have used stones set on end as fencing (here is a

for free foraging, a vegetable garden, an olive grove (a little optimistic) and even a hot house full of tropical fruit. For the thirsty there is a hop garden, a cider orchard and a vineyard.3. Roses: none of the other RHS Shows have quite as many roses