Composting Ideas, Tips & Guides

If you buy your garden border plants from the people who grow them, you’ll benefit from their expert advice and knowledge.

If you have limited space indoors, there is still a range of house plants you can buy to add greenery to your home. Succulents and cacti offer the biggest choice of small house plants, but there’s a wealth of other varieties to enjoy, from air plants that grow without compost to the carnivorous Venus flytrap. As well as small plants, look for slow-growing house plants that take time to reach their mature height, such as the nerve plant. Windowsills, desks, hanging planters and shelves can all be enhanced by space-saving house plants.

Having cut spent flowering stems from all the hellebores over the weekend, amassing a large trugful of them, rather than compost them all I decided to use several stems in today’s vase. Not only was it the last opportunity this year to use hellebores in a vase, but this time I could also be sure, with seedpods well-swollen, that the stems will remain upstanding, unlike vases when the blooms were fresher. I wish I could tell you what colour the original blooms were, but I can’t; now, they are a very pale green with dark speckled centres, giving them a kind of vintage appearance.

May growing with Cel

As part of your Premium access, you can send your gardening questions to our horticultural experts each month. They will then answer a selection of the questions they receive, and share the advice at the end of the month.

What to Do if Your Astilbe Fails to Bloom

The umbrella plant is popular for its large leaves that are held on a long stem, with five long leaves spanning out like the canopy of an umbrella. There are two species of umbrella plant, Schefflera, that make good house plants – Schefflera arboricola and Schefflera actinophylla. These are both easy to grow and low maintenance, being able to cope with a bit of neglect when it comes to watering. These house plants are fast growing, reaching up to 3m, with evergreen foliage that will make an impact in the corner of a room. The most common one found online is Schefflera arboricola, which is native to China and its cultivar ‘Nora’, which is more compact than the species, reaching only 1.5m tall. There is also ‘Gold Capella’, which has yellow margins on its leaves.

For keen gardeners, a verdant, emerald lawn is a cherished asset. To achieve and uphold this, it's vital to regularly provide your lawn with nutrients. Organic fertilisers offer an excellent solution, not only because they stimulate growth but also because they enhance soil structure and are eco-friendly. In this article, we'll delve into how and when to best use organic fertilisers to ensure your lawn flourishes, and we'll demonstrate how a fertiliser spreader can be beneficial.

Summer wouldn’t be summer without dahlias. Their beautiful flowers come in almost every colour imaginable, from pale pastels to hot, vibrant shades. They come in a range of flower shapes, from small tight balls to lily-like blooms the size of dinner plates. They’re perfect for adding late summer colour to borders from July to October and look good in any style of garden, from a cottage-style border to a jungle or exotic scheme. They look especially good with cosmos, grasses, Verbena bonariensis or cannas.

Hollyhocks (Alcea) have long been associated with cottage gardens. Perfect for the back of a border, they grow up to 2m in height. Each stem bears masses of open, bee-friendly flowers measuring up to 10cm in diameter, from July to September. Hollyhocks are biennial or short-lived perennials. In the first year they put on root and foliage growth and in the second they flower, set seed and then die.

One of the major benefits of gardening in a raised bed is you get to control the soil that goes into it. This is especially advantageous for gardeners with a property that has hard-packed or clay soil, issues with tree roots, or concerns about pollutants. It also comes in handy if you want to place your raised bed on a patio or driveway. Since good soil is the foundation of a healthy garden, you want to make sure you’re setting your vegetables up for success. So, what is the best soil for a raised garden bed? In this article, I’m going to share some advice on figuring out how much soil you need, what to purchase, amending a soil delivery, and more. Another raised bed benefit is that the soil will remain friable. In an in-ground garden, the soil can become hard-packed over tim

Here in the Northeast, rocks are just a part of gardening life, and even if you are raising vegetables in an old garden (one that’s been well tended for decades), there will still be some rocks in the soil. You (as well as the tines on your pitchfork) can’t help but encounter them. However, there are still plenty of vegetables that you can grow well in these conditions. Here are some of them.

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.

When you’re pruning in the garden, rather than adding the spent branches to your green bin or bagging them up and taking them to the recycling centre, why not make the most of this valuable resource by shredding it for the compost or for use as a mulch? A garden shredder chips garden waste so that it takes up less room and breaks down quickly and easily, and if you want to save money on compost and mulch in the future, they’re an essential piece of kit.

Golden pothos (Epipremnum or Scindapsus) not only has pretty, heart-shaped foliage that trails or climbs, but it’s also one of the easiest house plants to grow. It’s tolerant of all kinds of conditions and neglect – it’s thought it gets one of its common names, devil’s ivy, because it can grow in low light levels and is virtually impossible to kill. Golden pothos can be trained up a pole or along wires on a wall, and also looks brilliant hanging from a shelf or hanging basket.

What is egg shell fertiliser?

Gardening is not an inherent knowledge that we all magically have. Simply because you have some green space, it does not mean you know what to do with it and we cannot all be Tom Stuart-Smith, Arne Maynard or Gertrude Jekyll, more's the pity. So what do you do if you have a garden but have no idea how to garden?

The ponytail palm (Beaucarnea recurvata) is an eye-catching and low-maintenance house plant. Despite its name, it’s not a true palm but belongs to the Asparagaceae family. Originating from Mexico, it’s also known as Nolina (its former genus name), the elephant’s foot tree or bottle palm due to its swollen trunk base. Its unique appearance, resilience and ease of care make it an excellent choice for beginner and experienced gardeners.

When your name comes up on the allotment waiting list, you may imagine a plot of neat rows of vegetables left by the previous tenants. However, allotments are often left untended for a few months before being passed on, and are therefore rarely in good shape by the time you reach the top of the list.

A compost bin gives you the satisfaction of turning kitchen and garden waste into rich, crumbly compost, which you can use as a mulch in the garden or mix with loam and leaf mould to make your own potting mix. What’s more, because food and garden waste releases methane (a harmful greenhouse gas) when sent to landfill, composting is good for the planet, too.

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Oxalis triangularis, also known as false shamrock, is an eye-catching bulbous perennial that makes an excellent and long-lived house plant. Bold, dramatic foliage in shades of dark purple to wine-red creates a striking contrast to blush-white flowers borne in summer. The leaves are three-lobed, hence the name of shamrock which it resembles, though is not actually related to. Oxalis triangularis is native to from Brazil. Its leaves have extra fascination because they open during the day and close at night.

House plants in the office can help to reduce stress levels, increase concentration and therefore prductivity, and generally make the office a nicer environment to work in. The types of house plant that are suited to an office depend on your particular office – is it bright, shady, warm or cold? Many offices may have air conditioning, which can be drying for plants and unsuitable for house plants from tropical regions. Assess your office before buying house plants, whether it’s at home or in the work place.

Acidanthera (Acidanthera murielae syn. Gladiolus murielae) – also known as the Abyssinian gladiolus, callianthus, sword lily or peacock lily – is a graceful summer-flowering perennial. It has erect grass-like leaves and slender stems up to 1m tall, each one bearing several nodding, funnel-shaped, white flowers with purple throats. The flowers are attractive to a range of pollinators, including bees, which visit for nectar and pollen.

Goji berries (Lycium barbarum) are a popular ‘superfood’ to eat fresh or dried. Native to China, they’re packed with vitamins and antioxidants and have been used in Chinese medicine for over a thousand years. They’re easy to grow at home in the UK and bear fruit after just one or two years. The best thing about growing your own goji berries is that you can eat them straight from the bush – most commercially available goji berries are dried.

Peace lily, Spathiphyllum wallisii, is a popular, low-maintenance house plant with glossy, green leaves and white flowers, called spathes. Native to Central America, it’s used to a warm, humid environment and is perfect for growing in a bright bathroom. Peace lilies are easy to grow and relatively trouble-free.

Whether you have a small or large garden, or simply a patio or balcony, container gardening offers you flexibile growing opportunities. Growing plants in containers is an easy way to create instant and changeable displays right outside your back door – especially useful if you’re short on space.

The beautiful balcony plants on the terrace at the London house of Henrietta Courtauld of the Land Gardeners

Overwatering Philodendron is not uncommon, but what is concerning is that most of us don’t know how to revive one that is suffering from root rot.

March growing with Rachel

March growing with Cel Robertson

Use a large pot, bigger the better as the roots need room to grow and the soil needs to hold moisture. 18″ depth and diameter are needed. Use good quality compost and add a slow release fertiliser. Top dress each year and add more slow release fertiliser. Repot when the compost is totally denuded of goodness, perhaps every 5 years. Plant deeply as you would in the garden, to avoid clematis wilt. Water regularly and avoid drying winds and strong sunshine. Support the vine with a good quality, firm framework.

How to Use Straw Mulch in the Vegetable Garden

Winter Mulching to Protect Cold Tolerant Crops

Philodendron ‘Pink Princess’  is an eye-catching house plant with lush, dark green, waxy leaves boldly variegated with bubble-gum-pink. Philodendron is a popular and easy-to-grow plant for the home that gives all-year foliage interest with versatile growth that can either trail or climb, and ‘Pink Princess’ is a new and unusual variety. The glossy evergreen leaves are heart-shaped, giving rise to its other name of ‘sweetheart plant’. ‘Pink Princess’ philodendron slowly reaches a maximum height of 1.5m and spread of 1.2m if given a moss pole to climb up. Alternatively, pinch out the growth regularly to grow ‘Pink Princess’ as a bushy or trailing house plant. Note that philodendron is toxic to humans and animals and can cause skin irritation, so take care when handling.

Box, Buxus sempervirens, is a British native tree, most commonly used for hedging and topiary thanks to its small, evergreen leaves and dense growth. In April and May, it produces insignificant yellow flowers, that are nonetheless rich in nectar and popular with bees. Left untrimmed, a box plant can reach 5m tall, but most never reach this as they are clipped regularly.