Salvias are generally drought resistant, long flowering and many have scented foliage, plus they are great for attracting pollinators too. They are the perfect option for a hot, dry border with free draining soil.   There are annual, biennial and perennial salvias. Planted in the right spot, the shrubby and hardy herbaceous salvias can overwinter. There are a number of half hardy species that need protection from frost, so are either grown in pots or lifted and moved to a greenhouse, for example Salvia blepharophylla,  Salvia cacaliifolia, pineapple sage (Salvia rutulans), and Salvia ..read more

Its that time of year when we are all planning what to grow on our plots. Kim Stoddart outlines her favourite produce for effective buddy planting on the veg patch… To be perfectly honest with you, my gardens are one large mix and match, biodiverse affair. What started with experimentation into companion planting many years ago has ended with raised beds filled with many varieties of produce with barely any block planting in sight at all. I much prefer it this way. It’s harder for pests to seek out their favourite produce when it’s mingled in with less desirable others and I no longer need to ..read more

As an ecologist, I love exploring salt marshes and shingle banks where conditions are truly extreme for plant and animal alike. Its here that you find sea kale, thrift,  yellow horned-poppy, sea lavender, sea pea, sea campion, sea blight and other plants that can cope with the high levels of salt. They are classed as halophytes. Living in a salt water environment, they are adapted to a physiological drought  – just as in the Ancient Mariner  “Water, water every where, Nor any a drop to drink”.   They have all sorts of adaptations to enable them to survive this hostile ..read more

Here are a few top tips to help get you through the current drought especially in those areas where you can’t use your hose pipe Prioritise the areas of the garden that need water – pots, newly planted trees, shrubs and other plants, the veg plot etc. The lawn is definitely at the bottom of the list as it is resilient and will recover. Don’t disturb the soil by weeding etc as this will cause more water to be lost. If you need to remove any weeds, cut them off at ground level and leave the roots in the ground and the soil undisturbed. Water in the morning or evening when its cooler so less wat ..read more

Posted on 19th January 2022 by Sally_Empire As a new gardener many years ago, all the books I read described growing vegetables in a rotation with neat, weed-free rows.  But over the years, I have moved to a polyculture approach in which I grow a number of different crops in the same bed, rather than have whole beds of one crop which are rotated each year.  When you mix up the crops, it’s more difficult for pests to locate their host plants and disease to spread. I like to grow flowers amongst my veg to create a vegetable growing area that has a cottage garden look. There is more bio ..read more

After a summer of high temperatures and little rain, gardening magazines, blogs and posts are full of recommendations for drought-tolerant plants.  But are drought tolerant plants the answer? Looking around my garden, its clear that the classic drought-tolerant perennials have survived well  – my eryngiums, rubeckias, heleniums, euphorbias and salvias have fared well. And all they have had is the odd bucket of water. But then my soil, which is a heavy loamy clay and retains moisture, was heavily mulched to improve the water retention further.  As I have written many times, the k ..read more

Kim Stoddart gets up and close and personal with this important enabler of veg patch life and explains how to keep it fertile and simply fantastic all year round… It may not look very glamorous but this earthy substance is the key to the success of your food growing efforts. Treat it well and make it as effective as can be with the addition of compost, mulching, and (if you have it) rotted manure. There will be no need for bought-in fertilisers or plant feeds at all. It’s no wonder then that in an organic growing system, soil is king as this nutrient-rich super loam can contain all the food yo ..read more

We have all seen flowers appearing earlier than ever – daffodils in December, magnolia in February – but now the extent of the change has been revealed by a new study. The research, carried out by a team at Cambridge University, found that plants in the UK are flowering as much as a month earlier than just 70 years ago. Its long been known that temperatures in urban areas are higher than the surrounding area due to more buildings, cars and people etc, something called the urban heat island effect. But these changes are more than can be expected from urbanisation – global warming is contri ..read more

A garden or allotment can look a complete mess after surging floodwaters have passed through.  It wouldn’t be so bad if it was just rainwater, but most flood water carries with it all sorts of contaminants – plastic, sewage, manure, slurry and chemicals, such as oil and pesticides, and much more besides. So, if you suspect that the water is contaminated, wear protective clothing and waterproof boots while in the garden and keep pets away. It best to avoid going into the garden until the flood waters have drained away. Before you do so, make sure the electricity supplying any outside socke ..read more

This blog was published on 4 June 2019 and a similar pattern has emerged in 2020, except this time the months of March, April and May have been hot and dry …. Hurrah, some rain is forecast.  I know, it’s June, and we all want to be outside enjoying the sun and the last thing we want is rain.  But 2019 has been a dry year so far.  Down in the south-west, January was incredibly dry. Then summer arrived early in February, when temperatures soared and reached record highs in some part of the country. The rain returned in March, but April and May have had lower than average rainfall ..read more