Part one of this tutorial covered the basics of how to water your garden effectively and to minimise wasting water. In this second part we describe the things we can all do to reduce the need to water with mains water in the first place. Preparation is everything Planting Our number one rule when embarking on any gardening, is to know your garden. Knowing where water drains to or from, where is baked by summer sun and where is shady and/or cooler is fundamental. It is of utmost importance to understand your soil type and whether you have sandy, silty or clay soil, or something in-between. This ..read more

OK, our allotment looks terrible, but it has to get worse before it gets better ..read more

Watering. It’s probably the most important gardening task… but do you know the best way to do it? We delve into the topic in this two part tutorial. Part one deals with how to water, including managing in a drought. Part two looks at how we can all reduce the demands of our gardens for mains watering from the outset. Good practice watering The basics Know your soil type and how water retentive it is. Sandy soils will always require more water and more frequent watering than a clay soil. However, clay soils can crack open and are hard to re-wet when baked dry. Mulching both in the spring will h ..read more

November 2022 – Ellie was honoured to be shortlisted for the Garden Media Guild Awards. She was a finalist in the ‘Alan Titchmarsh New Talent of the Year’ category for her media work on Wildlife Gardening. https://www.gardenmediaguild.co.uk/awards/gmg-awards-shortlist-2022 November 2022 – For the fourth time, Ellie was invited onto the ‘Gardening with the RHS’ Podcast to talk about sowing wildflower meadows and including wildflowers in your borders. Listen here https://podfollow.com/rhs-gardening/episode/f4eaddaecad47a4236fe810ba99f13aec2797b39/view October 2022 – Ellie was interviewed on the ..read more

Since the 1970’s, conservationists and campaigners have been working to remove peat from composts. It is tempting to despair at the sluggish pace of change and the derisory measures implemented by the horticulture industry and government to reduce peat use over that time. But not all campaigns are the same…some catch the public imagination in an instant and revolutions can happen in the blink of an eye, or in the flower of an ox-eye daisy. So it is with Plantlife’s No Mow May campaign, which has spread like wildflower fire across the UK, blazing trails of pink, white and blue. Indeed the ‘no m ..read more

Check out our latest Youtube video! HELP! We spend a lot of time researching and producing our articles, podcast and videos. Please support our blog and the show by making a donation to our Paypal ..read more

HELP! We spend a lot of time researching and producing our articles, podcast and videos. Please support our blog and the show by making a donation to our PayPal Amateur Entomologists’ Society (AES) – The gateway to entomology (amentsoc.org) Amphibian and Reptile Groups of the UK (arguk.org) The Amphibian and Reptile Conservation Trust (arc-trust.org) Atlas of British and Irish Flora (Biological Records Centre) Back From The Brink (naturebftb.co.uk) Badgers | Badger Wildlife Charity UK | United Kingdom (badgertrust.org.uk) Bat Conservation Trust (bats.org.uk) Bees, Wasps and Ants Recording So ..read more

Gardening isn’t difficult but its fair to say there is a lot to learn. There is more than a lifetime’s learning in fact and even if we could know everything, some of the things we used to know will turn out to be wrong. Take all the commotion about re-naming Rosemary for instance (see our previous post here). But unless you are a horticultural scientist employed in a lab, what gardeners really want is to know what works. Regrettably, things aren’t so easy; it’s often difficult to separate truth from myth in the horticultural world. Some of these myths we call ‘merry-go-round facts’. Merry-go-r ..read more

Gardening can be like staring at a sweet shop window. The cornucopia of treats makes our fingers itchy, just grown-up kids desperate for a little bit of everything from the pick-and-mix stall. Whatever the size of our gardens, we can all indulge our fancies by choosing some annuals that take our eye. From a pint-sized pot to rolling acres, annuals enable us to start afresh each year with new colours and combinations. And like all good confectionary, the candied spice scent of Night Stocks (a personal favourite) is an intense pleasure, but tantalizingly ephemeral. Picking a tree is different. U ..read more