Gardenig in Britain. Tips & Guides

As the warm weather season approaches, we asked professional gardeners and landscapers to weigh in with their insights regarding the hottest landscaping looks of the year. From creating shade gardens to mixing in darker foliage, these trends will elevate your outdoor space.

If you often purchase arugula in those plastic containers at the supermarket, have you considered planting arugula yourself? This peppery green is easy to grow in gardens and containers. And, if you choose the right variety, it’s perennial. For a spicy summer salad option, read this guide to planting arugula. If you’ve ever read a British or Australian recipe and wondered what rocket or roquette is, well, it’s arugula. I explain more ab

Ground cover plants are low-growing plants that spread easily to cover areas where nothing much wants to grow.

People who are living in an apartment are always looking for plant options that are easy to maintain and can be grown in a limited space. if you are one of those, this list is curated especially for you!

Join us for a new podcast series of summer conversations with the BBC Gardeners’ World team. Listen to gardening inspiration from some of the UK’s most loved and well-respected gardening experts. With advice for adding colour to your garden, working with nature, boosting your wellbeing, thrifty gardening, veg growing and allotment life. We’ll also take you on a royal tour, go behind the scenes at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show, share garden designer secrets, tips for growing better roses, plant-based recipes with Deliciously Ella and much more. Plus, take a sneak peak inside the gardens of celebrities including Griff Rhys Jones and Caroline Quentin. Enjoy friendly gardening chat and informative discussion, perfect for everyone who loves gardening. With new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Subscribe now, wherever you get your podcasts, and never miss an episode.

May growing with Rachel

Cannabis is a plant made up of over 120 cannabinoids that boast a variety of uses, including a range of potential health benefits and is currently being used across the medical industry in the treatment of patients all over the world.

Campanulas are a diverse group of plants, including small, creeping species and towering perennials (meaning they come back each year). All have beautiful, usually blue, flowers, and most are attractive to pollinators.

Averting my eyes from the tulips which were shouting “Pick me! Pick me!” as I walked past, I headed towards the bottom end of the garden to pick some of the marauding Spanish bluebells that have sneaked their way in under/over/round the fence. The impact of bluebells in the garden has really registered in recent days, with the uninvited guests and the more local residents joining forces to provide by far and away the biggest splash of blue in the garden out of all the seasons. There may be little patches of blue from spring bulbs and isolated spots in the summer months, but bluebell season is something else and the splashes will only get larger and more widespread as time goes on, with even the English bluebells popping up in other parts of the garden than the woodland. By picking the Spanish bluebells, however, I can at least try and restrict their desire for dominance!

These bite-sized succulents nestled in mini pots are guaranteed to melt your heart, and they’re really easy to replicate. Get ready for a double dose of adorable!

If you love decorating with the flowers that you've worked hard to grow in your backyard garden but are looking to change things up a bit when it comes to display, we're here to provide you with plenty of creative ideas.

You might have spotted different vines on trees, and must have wondered what sort of plant they are. Well, we will give you the list of the ones that are notorious for this habit!

Mention Mediterranean gardens and you’re likely to imagine alfresco dining, soft colour palettes, citrus trees in terracotta pots and sun-loving perennials, all awash with the heady scents of herbs such as lavender and thyme. But you don’t need to travel to Greece or Italy to enjoy this kind of outdoor living. Mediterranean-style gardens are becoming more popular in the UK as many areas become more susceptible to drought, due to the climate crisis. Planting with species that have naturally evolved to live in hot, dry conditions means your garden will be more resilient in dry periods and more sustainable in its use of water – an extremely precious resource during our increasingly hot summers.

GardenAdvice one-day gardening course for beginners

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Perennials are the heart of so many gardens, coming back year after year to fill our spaces with beautiful flowers and foliage. But because they don’t usually bloom as long as annuals, and change through the seasons, they can sometimes be difficult to use effectively in a garden design—but not for the gardens we visit today in our look back at some of favorite perennial gardens featured on the GPOD.

Although growing thyme from seed isn’t difficult, it requires patience, since this versatile, fragrant herb takes a while to germinate and grow. However, with the right know-how, you can start your own thyme seedlings and subsequently grow them into mature plants. Plus, seed is much less expensive than established bedding plants, so you stand to save a lot of money by starting thyme seeds yourself. This article is going to cover starting seeds indoors and direct-sowing seeds once the soil warms up in spring. A member of the mint (Lamiaceae) family, thyme contains a chemical compound called thymol which contributes to its stron

We get to see tons of beautiful plants on the GPOD, but almost nothing gets people quite as excited as beautiful displays of roses. So today we’re celebrating some of the most beautiful rose-centric posts we’ve had on the GPOD.

We love a good before-and-after on the GPOD. Getting to see what a gardener started with really shows the work, talent, and time that goes into creating every garden we feature on the GPOD. So today we’re going to share some of our favorite glow-ups.

The kitchen garden at Alison Jenkins' Somerset smallholding

Straddling the seasons, rhododendrons are the buxom queens of spring, leading us into the floriferous summer months without any subtlety. They can grow into vast shrubs that, in bloom, are wondrous clouds of colour formed of handful-sized flowerheads.

The English walnut (Juglans regia) is a non-native deciduous tree that has been grown in the UK since Roman times. Although most trees are planted, self-sown trees do sometimes appear in warmer areas. Originating from southern Europe and parts of Asia, English walnut can now be found growing across the UK.

When you have plants that hang from the ceiling, they create a stunning cascading effect of foliage! A worthy chandelier replacement for sure!

Well-stocked bird feeders help to supplement birds’ food when it’s in short supply. Throughout the winter months, high-fat foods and water are in short supply but even through the spring and summer, a bird feeder will help to increase the number of birds you’ll see and help them raise their chicks successfully. Plus, ifyou’re regularly topping up your bird feeder, the same birds will continue to return as they learn your garden is a good source of food. Specialist bird cakes, seeds and food like mealworms and flaked maize are all good options and supplying a variety of foods is a good way of attracting a wider range of bird species to your garden.

Ground cover plants provide a dense carpet of beautiful foliage and flowers that can be an amazing addition to simple and elegant gardens while greatly supporting pollinators, such as hummingbirds and bees. These low-growing plants usually spread quickly and are generally easy to maintain.

Cherry Ong has shared these photos of a container she created for her garden in Richmond, British Columbia, last summer. She used a big container, about 32 inches in diameter, from her favorite source, Pot Inc., and planted it up with all kinds of beautiful plants, with a heavy emphasis on great foliage and flowers playing a supporting role.

Courtesy of Little Greene Paint & Wallpaper

Header image: Lettuce in a grow room. Image credit: University of Western Australia (UWA).

I promised you tulips today, but even I wasn’t expecting these ones, remnants from a previous planting in a pot now filled with Carex ‘Everillo’. I can remember buying some fiery tulips two or three years ago, but have no idea why I would have put them in that particular pot, as their bright and brash colouring would have necessitated a planting location near the bold borders. Nevertheless, there they were, pushing aside the grass and cocking a snook at the main borders filling up with foliage of plants that will in due course have pink and purple blooms, so I had no qualms in cutting short their exhibitionism.

A farm turned garden near Toledo in Spain by landscape designer Fernando Martos

The monkey puzzle tree (Araucaria araucana) is a large evergreen tree with a distinctive shape – its often horizontal branches are covered in spirals of sharp, triangular leaves. When mature, trees produce large cones at the tips of the branches. 

Rembrandt Gardens, Little Venice

In March 1910, readers of The Daily Mail were confronted with an advertisement that read, ‘Ten Thousand Englishwomen could be ranged in a line and shot. No one would be sorry. Everyone would be glad. There isn’t any place for them.’ This was pretty strong stuff, but it was just an extreme example of a widely held belief: that the country was burdened with ‘surplus women’. In 1854, author and social campaigner Harriet Martineau estimated that there were over 500,000 more women than men in Great Britain; by 1891, the number had risen to over 900,000. The chief reason given at the time was the high level of emigration among young men seeking opportunities across the British Empire. Every young man signing up to be a colonist, a member of the armed forces, a civil servant or a trader in the British colonies was one less for the women left at home to woo and catch. There was real anxiety that as a result there were ‘surplus women’ who would not find a husband to take care of them after their fathers died. The ‘surplus’ or ‘redundant’ women that bothered commentators most were middle- and upper-class women. Single working-class women were not viewed as surplus; they could go into paid occupations deemed suitable to their station, such as domestic service or factories. For ‘respectable’ women higher up the social scale, however, conventional society offered very few options.

As a busy working parent, Tan France loves to shop online—not just because it's convenient, but because it can be easier to find a good sale, too.

Even though our country is small, we have all kinds of climates just a short journey away from each other. Unfortunately, this can make gardening a bit of a guessing game, as some planting advice might not apply to your garden!