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Gardens can look a bit dull at the moment but there is no need to put up with this. Your garden can look spectacular in autumn with a bit of planning so add some carefully selected shrubs for colour and interest every year. My own garden is rather windy and prone to early autumn frost…

We seem to be in a mild spell at the moment and garden work is pleasant. Autumn often means lots of heavy garden work: emptying compost heaps, digging, tree planting, mulching or ‘big pruning’. So it is a relief to spend some time doing less physical and more creative jobs. Planting patio pots definitely fall…

Grape hyacinths (muscari) are delightful spring flowers that are easy to grow and adaptable to most garden conditions. But they have a bit of a bad reputation. I remember a neighbour, when I was a child, who spent years battling the common Muscari armeniacum, digging out bucketfuls every year. And he never won the battle….

Saving seeds from your plants may seem like a lot of work and hardly worth the effort but it can be simple to do, help you produce lots of plants at little expense and it can save you money too. Before we go into details of how to do it – and there are different…

Most people plant their patio pots in May to provide colour all summer. These pots are probably looking a bit scruffy by now. Many people leave the pots in their dead state over winter, only paying them attention at Easter! Yet they should be replanted now and they will give colour and interest through autumn…

Ground cover plants seem to be nature’s gift to gardeners. They promise a colourful and interesting way to fill expanses of the garden while smothering weeds. A few decades ago they were all the rage. Before that it was heathers and conifers which was very much the same thing. Now it is prairie planting. Many…

As autumn approaches and flowers become something of a rarity in the garden, it is berries that supply a lot of the colour. We tend to think of berries as red but there are lots of other colours too. The most important groups of plants for berries are the cotoneasters and pyracantha and both are…

It is time to think about spring. Yes I know it seems a little early but spring bulbs need to be planted in the next two months. The cold night last Thursday was a reminder that autumn is on its way even though it is warm now. Daffodils are among those that should be planted…

Despite unusual warmth and heavy rain in some places, there is still plenty of colour in the garden. Many bedding plants should still be flowering well and rudbeckias, heleniums and helianthus, along with asters and even phlox may still be in bloom. But September is not peak time for flowering shrubs. There may still be…

Our gardens are still full of summer colour but it will soon be time to think about spring. Thousands of packs of colourful spring-flowering bulbs will be filling the shelves at Nags Hall to tempt you and they will be selling fast. So if you want the best and newest kinds you can’t leave it…