What's new, what's growing, what we're learning. Updates, guides and stories for people who take their garden seriously.
Cirrus, halo, thunderstorm tower, falling pressure, low hunting swallows and daisies that shut at three: what genuinely holds up, and why your look at the sky beats the app over the next two hours.
What fits this week in the beds.
From elderflowers in May to the apple press in October: how to bottle the summer and enjoy it all year long.
Turn your lawn into a species-rich meadow over two to three years, without any digging. The mowing regime is what decides it.
What readers are digging into most right now.
Find posts about whatever is growing in your garden right now.
One wheel or two, pneumatic tyres or solid rubber, barrow or cart: what spares your back, how to load properly and which numbers on the label actually mean something.
The garden should not hurt. A raised bed at 80 to 90 cm, a table bed you can pull up under, long handles, kinder grips, lifting from the legs and working in twenty minute stints instead of three hours in the same position.
Under the canopy the grass thins out and then the moss arrives. Why shortage of light, root competition and throughfall work together, which mixture with supina bluegrass and red fescue actually holds, how to mow at 7 to 8 cm and feed less, and where the honest limit sits beyond which Waldsteinia, hostas and bark mulch are the better answer.
Your winter prunings are fencing material: willow rods strike root and turn into a living fence, hazel poles stay dead and last 5 to 10 years as a weave, brushwood becomes a Benjes hedge. Weaving technique, cutting season CW 46 to 9, service life honestly counted, and what neighbour law has to say about it.
Grasses plus low, tread tolerant flowers: white clover, daisies, creeping thyme, selfheal. Four to six cuts a year at 6 to 8 cm, no feed, no scarifying. How to sow a flowering lawn from scratch or overseed it into the sward you already have.
Root days, leaf days, waxing moon and ascending moon: what the moon-planting calendars actually say, what controlled sowing trials have found, and why the rules persist anyway.
Propagating without equipment: softwood cuttings in summer, hardwood cuttings in winter, layering on the berry bush. Where the cut goes, which species rot in a glass of water, and what rooting powder and willow water really deliver.
Fifteen kilos of carrots and one salad drawer in the fridge: how to build an earth clamp, what belongs in the sand box, and why the old natural cellar keeps root vegetables plump until March.
Two gardens, the same lawn, a completely different impression: the difference is the last five centimetres at the edge. How to cut the edge with a half moon iron or a spade, what shears and trimmers do in between, and why a mowing edge laid flush with the lawn abolishes the trimming altogether. With prices and service life for metal, plastic, pavers, brick and timber.
