Gardeners' Heaven

Achimenes, also known as hot water plants, were once a great favourite with Victorian gardeners and they deserve to be better known now. Distantly related to gloxinias and African violets, they are showy, short, bushy pot plants that are ablaze with exotic busy-lizzie-like flower in a huge range of colours from early summer through to [...]

by Alan Titchmarsh When you want masses of colourful pot plants to fill your conservatory or indoor windowsills this season, keep costs down by growing your own – from seed. Nowadays all sorts of popular annual species are available in economical packets, which will produce more than enough for your needs, and probably provide spares [...]

A century or so ago, a hotbed would have been one of the vital tools in any self-respecting head gardener’s armoury, along with several acres of walled garden, a huge range of glasshouses and dozens of helpers. You might have to pass on the rest, but a hotbed is entirely do-able even in today’s tiny [...]

The humble olive tree. Go on holiday and you see groves of them, seemingly battling their daily existence on the most precarious of slopes all across the med. Olea Europaea has been cultivated for olive oil, fine wood, olive leaves and the fruit. November is peak harvesting time and the recent high winds in the [...]

When your stack of seed catalogues reaches critical mass and the weather stops you doing anything useful outdoors, it’s time to make out your annual seed order and post it off. Oh, I know you could probably buy what you want from your local garden centre in spring, but there’s a lot to be said [...]

Any mature garden generates a certain amount of woody waste every year, and it needs getting rid of. But prunings can’t be composted, and with bonfires off-limits and trips to the municipal tip costing a fortune in petrol, disposal is becoming a problem. Well, try recycling your twiggy garden rubbish instead. Elderly bamboo plants yield [...]

If anyone needs a crystal ball, it’s a gardener. It would be so much easier to plan for the gardening year ahead if we only knew what the weather will do, which particular pests, diseases or disorders will run riot next season, and which new fashion-trends will emerge. As it is, we can only make [...]

by Alan Titchmarsh Oh, we have a lot to thank plants for – but perhaps more so now than at most times of year. It’s plants, after all, that make Christmas merry. As you knock back a glass of your favourite festive tipple, consider – it’s all thanks to grape vines that you can enjoy [...]

There’s no need to shut yourself away indoors for the winter. Even out of season, there’s nothing like a changing sequence of flowers to tempt you outside to discover what’s looking good today – and since winter flowers are subtle rather than loud, you really do have to walk round to satisfy your curiosity. Witch [...]

by Alan Titchmarsh One of the first rituals in the run-up to Christmas is choosing your tree. Some families like to make an outing of it, visiting a forestry plantation to pick their favourite ‘on the hoof’. Others find an excursion to the local nursery or garden centre is great fun, now they’re in full [...]