- Gardening RSS Feed

A powerful restorative: One charity could benefit most from the Chelsea Flower Show

Sat, 26 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

'Are you knackered? I'm knackered!" laughs Joe Swift. It is 9am the Sunday before Chelsea Flower Show opens, and he's yelling down Main Avenue at Arne Maynard, a Chelsea veteran of many years. Behind the scenes here, with 36 hours to go before the Queen turns up, there is cameraderie and criticism, some dangerous forklift-truck driving, RHS assessors armed with clipboards, TV crews armed with blue ropes to mark their sightlines, and very tired people armed with rude jokes about "Diarmuid's erection" (an 80ft scaffolding pyramid of plants designed by former Grand Designs bad boy Diarmuid Gavin).

Weekend Work: Time to tend to clematis

Fri, 25 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

What to do

Get busy: Late May means all change in the garden

Fri, 25 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

"Until all danger of frost has passed." It's a phrase you trip over repeatedly in gardening books (and columns). But when exactly will that moment happen? Sometimes the whole of May will pass without temperatures plunging below zero. Sometimes, there are killer frosts in early June, shrivelling newly set out bedding plants and kicking greenhouse heaters into action.

Sheditecture: designer gardens make their mark at Chelsea

Wed, 23 May 2012 12:56:46 GMT

It isn’t the rather lovely foxglove which won best plant in show, nor is it Diarmuid Gavin’s eyecatching pyramid of scaffolding. What will stay in the mind from this year’s Chelsea are the sheds.

TV gardener wins top prize at Chelsea

Tue, 22 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Joe Swift, the BBC Gardeners' World presenter who was forced to stand down from this year’s coverage of the Chelsea Flower Show after new BBC rules banned anyone involved in designing a show garden, has won a prestigious gold medal for his efforts.

Brewin Dolphin garden scoops top prize at the Chelsea Flower Show

Tue, 22 May 2012 13:22:27 GMT

A garden celebrating the popularity of topiary has scooped best in show at the Chelsea Flower Show.

Chelsea Flower Show: It's the Monsters of Rock Garden

Mon, 21 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

It was a case of sex, drugs and rockeries as Ringo Starr, Roger Daltrey and Sir Cliff Richard joined other special guests to enjoy an exclusive preview of the Chelsea Flower Show yesterday.

If the Chelsea Flower Show is too posh for you, try the Chelsea Fringe

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Chelsea clashed with Bayern Munich in the Champions League last night, and tomorrow the Chelsea Flower Show will burst into life. But there is a third institution carrying the name of London's most upmarket district: the Chelsea Fringe, a three-week festival of nearly 80 gardening-themed events which began yesterday.

The French connection: lessons from an edible garden

Sat, 19 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

The French and their vegetables, huh? My sister and I are sitting in a French restaurant, and we're definitely eating soup, but its identity is eluding us. It is labelled with the musical word "topinambour", but that's as far as we get. The waitress isn't a huge amount of help; though we speak French and she speaks English, none of us possesses a specialist knowledge of vegetable translation. "It's a bit like a parsnip," she tells us finally, and we take another sip of soup, which is a weirdly frustrating experience when you don't know what exactly it is that you're eating.

Flower Show 2012: Chelsea's other fixture

Fri, 18 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

A is for Alan Postill. Never heard of him? Well, if you're a keen gardener, you might be living with his wife. So to speak. Mr Postill is propagator at Hillier Nurseries and raised Daphne bholua 'Jacqueline Postill', named after his missus. This year, he introduces Choisya 'Aztec Gold', a new variety of the golden-leaved form of Mexican orange blossom. A is also for Alan Titchmarsh, inset, who will be presenting BBC coverage.

Show time for the 'Gardener's Garden'

Fri, 18 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

There are five key elements that garden designer, Arne Maynard, says he has to have in a garden: topiary, old-fashioned roses, vegetables, wild flowers and fruit. All find a place in the show garden he's made for the Chelsea Flower Show, which opens next week. He's called it 'The Gardener's Garden', because there's relatively little hard landscaping and an awful lot of plants, massed in pinks and purples and blues in a big, loosely-planted border which swirls around comfortable pieces of topiaried box.

Weekend work: Stop new fruit trees from fruiting

Fri, 18 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

What to do

What to do, see & buy: Open squares; Craghopper; Jazz Covers; Tree Coat Stands; Ferragamo's Creations; Scion

Fri, 18 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Wade in

Horticulture: Can you dig it?

Thu, 17 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

The Chelsea Flower Show, for all its indisputable merits, is not cool. Manicured lawns, panama hats and nicely-trimmed clematis all have their place, but do they really express what it is to be a trowel-wielding, window-sill potting, urban green-fingers in 2012?

Down from the mountain: The Himalayan birch creates charming mini copses in city landscapes

Sat, 12 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

We're standing in the children's playground. At the edge, outside the fence, is a little group of trees. They are birches, white-stemmed with fresh green foliage, just opening so it looks at the moment like little flags.

Weekend Work: Time to tend to greenhouses

Fri, 11 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

What to do

Twitter feed: Should we be putting out food for birds?

Fri, 11 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

"Your robin needs YOU," screamed the banner above a huge array of wild bird food in our garden centre earlier this year. "No it doesn't," I wanted to shout, equally loudly. The manufacturers of bird food may need you (the UK market is worth £200 million a year). The RSPB may need you. But the robin doesn't. Not in the sense that we humans understand the word. Nor should it. We are far too fallible to be the repositories of its trust.

Squish 'em in: The Chelsea Flower Show reveals how to pack in a punch of colour

Sat, 05 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

It's May and Chelsea Flower Show season approaches. Yes, it's the nutty season of manufacturing completely fake little gardens in just three weeks of preparation, designed specifically to look as if they've been there forever.

Weekend Work: Time to sow lettuce and radish seeds

Fri, 04 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

What to do

Veg out: How to produce a bumper crop this summer

Fri, 04 May 2012 23:00:01 GMT

The cheapest way to grow vegetables is to do them from seed. But sometimes, there is a good reason to buy young plants instead. You may not have the space to fiddle around with compost and seed trays. You may not want the uncertainty that goes with sowing seed. Cover or not cover? Heat or no heat? Or you may want to plug a few gaps quickly, which is the position I'm in after a snail climbed to the very top shelf in the greenhouse and demolished all but one of the cucumber plants growing there.

Where the wild things are: Richard Mabey's 'Food for Free' has Emma Townshend salivating

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Foraging is in fashion. After all, the Danish, Michelin-starred forager-chef René Redzepi was on the cover of Time magazine a few weeks ago! In his knitwear, with his lovely hair! It's true, they put a Copenhagen cook who gathers his ingredients by wandering through wild Danish forests with a basket over his arm like Red Riding Hood, on the front of the world's biggest- selling news weekly (OK, they went with something else on the cover of the US edition, but still...). What a guy!

Weekend Work: Time to replant primrose and polyanthus

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 23:00:01 GMT

What to do

Urban growth: A gardening guru is getting children hooked on the joys of growing fruit and vegetables

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Tom Moggach has a way of falling silent in the middle of a sentence, as though he's just remembered something he ought to be doing. When it first happened, I fully expected that he'd excuse himself from our conversation and dash out of his house into north London's busy streets. He has plenty of reasons to do so.

Withering heights: why the Brontës weren't so in touch with nature after all

Thu, 26 Apr 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Their books and poems – even their paintings – evoke the wild beauty that surrounded them at their remote parsonage home.

Acid test: There's a euphorbia for everyone but which of the bright-green flowers best suits you?

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 23:00:01 GMT

Quite often I'm moved to write about plants that have suddenly caught my eye or that seem mysteriously to be back in fashion, as if they've just been invented. Euphorbias, on the other hand, have been knocking about in my horticultural vocabulary since the year dot.