Gartenkern Magazine

Notes from the garden.

What's new, what's growing, what we're learning. Updates, guides and stories for people who take their garden seriously.

From the magazine

200 posts

Various dried bean seeds sorted into groups, in different colours and patterns

Self-Sufficiency

Saving Your Own Seed: Open Pollinated Instead of F1

Why F1 seed segregates, how to spot open pollinated varieties, and how to ferment and store your own seed.

A hedgehog walking across an autumn meadow of withered grass.

Natural Garden

Helping Hedgehogs Without the Common Mistakes: Robot Mowers and Slug Pellets Are the Real Danger

It isn't the missing hedgehog house that kills hedgehogs, but robot mowers, slug pellets and open shafts. Here is how to really help in autumn.

Wooden nest box with a round entrance hole, fixed to a tree in a garden

Natural Garden

How to Mount and Clean Nest Boxes the Right Way

Entrance hole size down to the millimetre, an easterly aspect, and the autumn clean-out: this is how your nest box actually gets occupied come spring.

Tiered wild hedge of native shrubs at the edge of a field, densely branched and grown in several rows

Natural GardenContains advertising

Plant a bird-friendly hedge from native shrubs

How to plant a layered wild hedge from native shrubs this autumn, giving birds nesting sites, cover and food all year round.

Robin sitting with fluffed up feathers on a bare twig in winter

Natural Garden

Feeding and Supporting Birds All Year Round

From the bird-feeder debate to a living pantry: how to support birds all year with clean food, water, and native berry shrubs.

A bumblebee foraging on the yellow catkins of a goat willow in early spring.

Natural Garden

Helping Bumblebees Thrive in Your Garden: Cold Flight, Deep Blooms and the Spring Gap

Why bumblebees are already flying in March, which blooms carry them through the spring gap, and how to build a home for them all year.

Species-rich flowering meadow in a garden with tall grasses and blooming wildflowers

Natural Garden

From Lawn to Wildflower Meadow: Convert, Don't Start Over

Turn your lawn into a species-rich meadow over two to three years, without any digging. The mowing regime is what decides it.

Ashy mining bee with black and grey hair, a ground nesting wild bee, on sandy ground

Natural Garden

Help Wild Bees Thrive: Nesting Sites, Bare Soil and Forage

Most wild bees nest in the ground, not in a bug hotel; here is how to give them bare soil, a properly built nesting aid and forage from February to October.

Constructed sand bed of open sand in a quarry park, surrounded by wild herbs

Natural Garden

Build a Sandarium: A Nesting Site for Ground-Nesting Wild Bees

How to build a sunny patch of open sand where mining bees and other ground nesters can dig their brood tunnels.