A new survey commissioned by Grant’s Blended Whiskey has found that garden centres in the south east of England are reporting a 20 per cent growth in the sales of night-blooming plants. Seventy per cent of the 3000 people questioned said they liked to socialise in the garden after dark. The report also found that [...]

There’s always a sense of adventure when ordering untreated, un-processed fresh from the wood timber. I needed some untreated chestnut fencing posts (chestnut doesn’t rot easily so lasts longer in the ground than any other UK wood apart from oak) and after several weeks of trying to track down a local supply (it felt like [...]

CAT will be running a new course next week, the first of its kind in the UK. It’s called Gardening for A Sustainable Future and will combine CAT’s unique blend of horticultural and environmental expertise. The course will look at gardening in relation to the issues of biodiversity and climate change, how they affect us [...]

Yalding Organic Gardens has re-opened for business under new ownership after being dumped by Garden Organic following a financial review earlier in the year. The campaign group set up to save the gardens has posted a mixed review of the facilities which you can see at http://yaldingorganicgardens.info/drupal/node/24 but they’re keeping an open mind and were [...]

It almost seems like one of the stereotypical greenie knit your own yoghurt pots moments but you can now get slug pellets made out of wool. Recycled wool no less. Strange but true. Made by Kindtoo there perhaps somewhat miss titled Slug Buggers expands when wet into a wough wooly carpet with small needle-like fibres [...]

After spending much of the winter tidying, digging, building, fencing and preparing its great to finally have my first seedlings coming up. This snap will also give you a good idea of what sort of soil I’m working with. I put compost on every year but no amount of compost will change the basic soil [...]

Compost Lover had nearly 1500 visitors last month (the most in one month so far) so thanks to all who made the call. You seem to be liking the how to make a dry stone wall blog, the low carbon garden - wattle blog and the bean pole archway blog the most so I’ll keep [...]

I made this with the help of Grace Crabb and Bob Shaw at the Centre for Alternative Technology’s coppice crafts course. During the five days we learnt how to split and turn wood, make charcoal and weave a wattle - all of which more later.
This is how I made the gate.
I started of by measuring [...]

I’ve been fencing off the garden plot with various styles to experiment with different techniques and get a feel for what it takes to fence off a plot of land properly. Thankfully I don’t have to worry about rabbits, foxes, deer or badgers so I’m just concentrating on keeping the sheep out. The next few [...]

Yesterday I decamped from my own garden to spend a day with my friend Sue Harper at her organic flower field. Her and her husband Pete work so hard to get the flowers and the field looking fantastic and beautiful it was great to spend a day there just barrowing mushroom compost around, weeding, watering [...]

Yes but. I’ve called this a ‘yes but’ because you can compost some weeds, but you have to be careful. For example if you’ve got a patch of nettles, you can harvest the leaves and stems and put them in a compost heap. They are in fact a rich source of nutrients. However its best [...]

Organic gardeners like to have something in bloom throughout the year to encourage wildlife activity and part of my goal this year is to keep a note of what’s flowering when to build up a picture of what’s missing so I can cover the gaps next year. Actually my records haven’t been that great so [...]

As we are never more than 6 few feet away from a rat (or 8, 10, 12 or 20 depending which particular website you believe), its a good idea not to encourage them to get any closer, especially as they carry the rather unpleasant Weil’s disease. For most compost systems its best to keep meat, [...]

You can make quick compost with grass clippings and leaves, so long as you chop and turn the mix every three days. You can also mix two parts grass clippings with every one part manure for another relatively fast compost, with no need to turn. You can also use grass clippings as mulch (lay it [...]

This is last weeks Compost Lover article from Garden News - just in time for Compost Awareness Week.
My article this week is wedged in between a brace of celebratory events organised to promote good gardening practice – National Beanpole Week and Compost Awareness Week. As May is also the first month in the year you [...]