If you’re looking out at your garden and wondering what to do now everything is slowing down and dying back … Here’s a handy little Autumn ‘To Do List’:   Autumn is quite an important season in gardening as it serves as a good time to start prepping things for next year’s display.  Managing tasks is vital so that nothing gets missed and claimed by the cold onslaught Winter could bring.    So with that in mind, here’s a little list of what we, at HSM, feel are essential things to do over the next couple of months.      Remove old flowers and flowerless s ..read more

Is it just me, or does everybody get a bit over excited when planning a border or planter in their garden?  Especially when wondering around our top choice nursery and seeing all the pretty plants in all their marvellous shapes, sizes and colours.  I get way too adventurous, overthink all my options and want to buy everything, regardless of the price.  This is where I run amok.  I want to buy every plant I can, mush them all into a border and I think it’ll look fabulous regardless.    It’s okay to admit if you do the same thing.  We all do.  It’s part of ..read more

Everyone likes a beautifully maintained flower bed with all the flowers manicured to perfection, the grass edging crisp and trimmed and the shrubs a perfect sphere of leafy greenness. A beautiful sight. Then you look down, close at the ground…eugh. Weeds have germinated. There’s footprints everywhere.  It’s just a bit messy looking. What can we do to get this A+ area into a AA++++ mega gold star bed?     Give it a coating, a cover, a topping.   Of Bark – A nice cheap option. Most bark will be a nice dark colour, so it makes for a lovely contrast for those brightly coloured ..read more

Well this is all very unexpected and shocking!   We’ve made it into the Top 10 of ‘UK Landscaping Blogs’ If you take a cheeky peak here, https://blog.feedspot.com/uk_landscaping_blogs/ , you’ll see out cute little blog sitting pretty as one of the 10 top blogs! This is a really cool moment for us here at HSM, and the recognition is great! Plus we’re tipped along side some much bigger blogging sites and companies, so that makes me feel pretty proud, not going to lie!    Thanks to FeedSpot for the honor, hope you guys are enjoying these posts as much as them! I’ll keep c ..read more

Upcycling.   In this day and age, reusing and recycling is a huge thing.  Saving the environment, protecting the planet and Mother Nature…all that stuff.  Before you take a short stroll out to your 17 bins, crates and bags that councils now insist we need for all out waste products, pause for 5 – 10 mins and think….”Can I use this jar for more than just jam?”   Quite a lot of the time, the answer will probably be yes, you can.  Small jars, old mugs, those ramekins you bought when you figured you would try to make crème brulee. They all make cute little pots that you ca ..read more

Blimey it’s been a couple of insanely hot weeks hasn’t it?!    Heat can be a real bother when it starts to climb to very non-British levels. Around the Mediterranean, they have siestas, in England, we…keep going…? I know which I’d prefer. In order to keep chugging along in the bright summer sun, and to make sure us gardeners and our plants don’t burn out, there are plenty of things we can do to beat the heat!   Thing 1. Watering. For a more detailed look, check out this post from last year about why watering is important, and how much it can help. Just going to add a quick tip t ..read more

In a garden far, far, far, not actually that far away. there comes a sad story, that I’ll tell you today…   Sitting there all securely rooted into its bed, with access to water and nutrients that kept it fed.   But surrounded by plants that grew big and tall, where there wasn’t much more room for this Hosta at all.       Now with all good stories, and the rhyming they carry, the main character has a name, so let’s name this Hosta, HARRY!    Now Harry looked sad, with no leaves on his stem, it appears he’d been eaten, by slugs causing mayhem.    He ..read more

To those who have been keeping up to date with our posts, firstly, thanks. Secondly, you probably read a post about a battle HSM had with a caterpillar.    Box Tree Caterpillar, to be exact.   Well…It’s back. So it’s time to refresh our memories and give this a little once over again.    Battle Of the Box. Letters to home style. For the ‘Too Long, Didn’t Read’ people out there, skip right to the very bottom paragraph for a quick version of how to deal with Box Tree Caterpillar.    Hopefully we caught it early enough this year that it doesn’t decimate our lov ..read more

Noise, vibrations, debris flying around at insane speeds, very sharp slicey things, itchy burny irritant stuff. There’s a lot of things gardeners need to be weary of, so rather nicely people made and invented stuff to keep our hands and faces protected from the dangerous things.   PPE has a whole set of legislation around it, that’s how seriously it’s taken. I’m gonna go over the basics for gardening in general, things you’d need for almost every job , every day. So here’s a longer guide from the big brains at the Government if you to have a nosey, http://www.hse.gov.uk/toolbox/ppe.h ..read more

The seasons be a changing, spring is on the horizon, therefore a fresh year of luscious growth and beautiful new flowers is approaching us.   With this winter nearly over and temperatures rising, it makes it the prefect time to prune back some of the winter interest that we left up to give our gardens a little bit of wow factor as after Autumn passing. Plants like Hydrangeas, Dogwoods, Fuchias, Hellebores all show up really well after a little bit of secateur work (if you haven’t done already).   Hellebores just need the remaining leaves cutting down around the plant, being careful n ..read more