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

Dry stone wall of layered natural stone in a garden, colonised by mat forming perennials

Natural Garden

Build a Dry Stone Wall as a Habitat

Stacked without mortar, a dry stone wall becomes a home for lizards, mason bees and joint-dwelling plants.

Four stainless steel solar path lights pushed into dark soil in front of a wooden wall

Natural Garden

Insect-Friendly Garden Lighting: Warm White, Shielded, on a Motion Sensor

How to keep your garden beautiful after dark while sparing moths, fireflies and bats: warm white, aimed downward, and only on when someone actually walks by.

Wide raised bog landscape in the Rotes Moor in the Rhön, with peat mosses, cotton grass and low birches.

Natural GardenContains advertising

Peat-Free Gardening: Why It Matters and How to Do It

Why peat is a drained bog in your flower pot, which alternatives actually work, and how to keep even blueberries happy with no peat at all.

Flowering wildflower meadow with tall grasses and colourful blooms in a naturalistic garden

Natural GardenContains advertising

Start a wildlife garden: five building blocks by effort and impact

Five building blocks for a wildlife garden, from a less-often-mown lawn to a small pond, sorted by effort and impact.

Honeybee gathering nectar from the violet flower of phacelia

Natural Garden

A Bee Garden All Year: How to Close the Summer Forage Gap

With a continuous bloom calendar you fill the midsummer forage gap and keep nectar and pollen flowing from March to October.

Colorful wildflower meadow with oxeye daisies, poppies and cornflowers on a sunny summer day

Natural Garden

Sowing a Wildflower Meadow: Why Poor Soil Wins

An abundant wildflower meadow does not start with the seed. It starts with taking the richness out of the soil.

Close-up of a common pipistrelle bat with its wing membranes spread

Natural Garden

Welcoming Bats to Your Garden: Roosts, Night Insects and Fragrant Evening Blooms

How to turn your garden into a hunting ground for bats: with night insects, fragrant evening blooms and a box hung the right way.

Wooden raised bed with young vegetables in a garden

Garden Practice

Building a raised bed in layers

Four layers from coarse to fine, roughly 80 cm of fill height, and a plan for the yearly top-up: how to build a raised bed that keeps producing for years.

Fig tree with large, deeply lobed leaves against a blue sky

Fruit Trees & ShrubsContains advertising

Propagating figs from cuttings: true to type and easy

A hand-long twig turns into a fruiting fig tree. Here is how to propagate your fig true to type from hardwood cuttings in winter, green cuttings in summer, or layering.

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