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 [...]

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 [...]

It’s that time of year again. The kids come back from school with a packet of seeds and a direct challenge to your family name.  The competitiveness is ugly.  You don’t want it to happen, you want to be strong, but just the mention of the words “growing competition” have you succumbing to notions of [...]

Do you have green fingers ? Are you addicted to gardening ? If you are, then lucky you! According to a recent survey, more than 70% of people believe spending time in the garden may improve their quality of life, and many of those surveyed said they would rather spend time in their gardens than [...]

by Alan Titchmarsh. Start today. If you haven’t already dug over your veggie patch and covered it with a sheet of polythene or some old plastic sacks to warm-up the soil, do so now and leave it a week before moving to phase two. Then uncover the ground, hoe off any weeds, sprinkle general-purpose fertiliser [...]