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A week with: Bosch Indego lawnmower

Wed, 19 Jun 2013 17:30:00 GMT

Price: £1,299
Battery: Lithium-ion 32.4V 3Ah
Battery charge time: 50 mins
Battery run time: 50 mins
Speed: 0.45m/sec
Slopes (max): 35 per cent
Cutting width: 26cm
Height of cut: 20-60 mm

Son of a gun: A toddler and an award-winning hose accessory? Not a good combination...

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 23:00:00 GMT

"I spent yesterday fixing my toilet," explains my friend Johnno, in among the glamour of the Chelsea Flower Show. "I had to take off the cistern, then put on another one."

Incredible edible: Guerrilla gardeners are planting veg for the masses in West Yorkshire

Sat, 15 Jun 2013 23:00:00 GMT

Welcome to Todmorden: the only town in Britain to attract vegetable tourists. This pretty spot on the Yorkshire/Lancashire border reinvented itself in 2008 with the founding of the volunteer-run community gardening scheme Incredible Edible; six years on, and they're really reaping the rewards. Todmorden is blooming under a very British, get-on-with-it, up-trowels spirit – fruit and veg are growing all over the town (population: 16,000), vandalism is down, spending on local produce is up. And now the rest of the world wants to learn how it's done.

National Gardens Weekend is the perfect opportunity to pinch ideas for your own patch

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 23:00:00 GMT

It's National Gardens Weekend, says the NGS, whose famous yellow book lists nearly 4,000 gardens open to visitors; together, in the past 10 years, they've raised £22m for charity. Reading the entries in the guidebook, the come-on seems to be as much about lemon drizzle as lupins. Cakes are a must. Rain and wind might be lashing your borders but must never prevent you producing a decent coffee sponge. The latest one-upmanship is to bake the cakes with eggs from your own hens.

Wait and see: The joys of a slow-blooming peony

Sat, 08 Jun 2013 23:00:00 GMT

There are seven big buds on my peony "Sarah Bernhardt". I've just counted them. I've been waiting several whole summers for this. And you do wait a long time for peonies. You can occasionally find yourself feeling like the End Times will approach and the Sun and the Moon and the stars will all go dim before the peonies get themselves going. Here come the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse! Oh well, that's very inconvenient timing, because my "Bowl of Beauty" just decided to open.

And the gold goes to: Anna Pavord picks her favourites from the Chelsea Flower Show

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 23:00:00 GMT

Gold medals were scattered around the Chelsea Flower Show this year like petals falling from the apple blossom. In 2009, for instance, only three of the 13 show gardens got the top award. This year, 10 out of 15 did. And you can't suppose that this largesse was the result of a particularly good lunch on the judges' part. The panel meets at the cheerless hour of 8.30am on Monday, the day before the show officially opens.

The people's palaces: 70 years on Britain's prefabricated houses are still home to many

Fri, 07 Jun 2013 23:00:00 GMT

To tour the maze of 187 prefabs on the Excalibur Estate in Catford, south-east London, is to get a glimpse of the unique post-war attitude of make-do-and-mend. These humble, single-storey bungalows, with their hanging baskets and carefully tended gardens, were put up by German and Italian Prisoners of War from 1945 to 1946.

All aboard: A horticultural trip through the summer

Sat, 01 Jun 2013 23:00:00 GMT

Gloria Dolores! Blimey, in May the gardening world does go bonkers. Things are whooshing past like those fast, non-stopping trains that run down the middle rails in quiet country stations.

L is for: An essential guide to Latin, lime and lily beetles

Fri, 31 May 2013 23:00:00 GMT

Latin

Mow power to you: 'I never used to want a lawn; now I'm obsessed'

Sat, 25 May 2013 23:00:00 GMT

I never imagined I could become the kind of person who would be interested in lawns. I never actually wanted to have grass, to tell you the truth. I thought it was a stupid idea. You've got to find somewhere to put the mower, and somewhere to put the extension lead for the mower, and somewhere to put all the clippings created by the mower, and that's before you've stored all the poisonous chemicals you need to keep the lawn in anything like good condition.

May has been a good month for gardeners

Fri, 24 May 2013 23:00:00 GMT

When it came, it came all at once. Spring, I'm talking about. I've seen it happen like that in New York, the tulips on Fifth Avenue in bud at the beginning of the week, dropping their petals in a heat wave at the end. But over here, it's usually more gradual. We seem to have been waiting forever for the trees to leaf up, for the grass to get greener, for the plants to have the courage to grow again. And finally it's happened. Hallelujah!

Boxes of delight: Will one man and his cubes of yew take gold at the Chelsea Flower Show?

Fri, 17 May 2013 23:00:00 GMT

The Chelsea Flower Show, the 100th, opens next week and this is an anxious weekend for the makers of the show gardens. Will a sudden frost murder tender plants hauled prematurely from their beds? Will an unexpected wind tear new leaves from trees uprooted from their comfortable nurseries and brought to stay for a razzmatazz week in town? Will the sponsor's money cover bills which by now may be reaching monumental proportions? Some of the big gardens will have cost more than a quarter of a million pounds to install.

Best in show: The RHS is seeking the 'plant of the centenary' to mark 100 years Chelsea

Sat, 11 May 2013 23:00:00 GMT

There's a space in my garden. Finally, a space. A space that could be filled with something new. Or possibly something old, as it turns out, because I am perusing the David Austin roses at my local garden centre, where they have a particularly good selection, and the ones I hanker to put in my trolley are soppy traditional roses such as "Albéric Barbier" and "Madame Isaac Pereire".

Weekend work: Time to plant dahlias

Fri, 10 May 2013 23:00:00 GMT

What to do

A very rare breed: Plantsman Nick Macer fills his eclectic nursery with fine specimens

Fri, 10 May 2013 23:00:00 GMT

"Seven-year cycles," says Nick Macer, owner of a superb nursery called Pan Global Plants in Gloucestershire, “they’ve had a lot to do with the way my life has worked out.” And because I don’t really get what he’s talking about, I’m rather relieved I’ve turned up at the nursery in the year that he is 45 years old. However I do the sum, I can’t make that anything to do with seven.

Welcome gnome: Kitsch garden ornaments are now allowed in to the Chelsea Flower Show

Thu, 09 May 2013 17:00:25 GMT

Britain’s smallest minority is taking its fight for recognition to the heart of the gardening establishment this week in what gnome rights activists are calling a horticultural revolution.

Open season: Spring's taken its time coming, but suddenly everything's blossoming at once

Sat, 04 May 2013 23:00:00 GMT

So there turns out to have been a stupendous silver lining to a year so far spent waiting for winter to leave: all at once our incredibly tardy spring has arrived, and every blossom tree that would have sensibly spread itself over March and April has opened simultaneously.

Orchid fever: Enter the exotic world of Britain's favourite pot plants...and their owners

Sat, 04 May 2013 23:00:00 GMT

There's no getting around this – the orchid is mainly about sex. Admittedly, most flowers are: the rose is all tight buds and extravagant climaxes; the lily is a pungent phallus. But the orchid is unashamedly raunchy: it wants hot and steamy rooms; it has provocative lips; it poses like a geisha.

Weekend Work: Time to sow leaf lettuce

Fri, 03 May 2013 23:00:00 GMT

What to do

I and J are for: An essential guide to insects, insecticides and jealousy

Fri, 03 May 2013 23:00:00 GMT

Impatience

Rock around the plot! It's the latest gardening craze

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 23:00:00 GMT

In the 1970s, it was the cornerstone of the suburban garden, as common as pampas grass. But by the end of the century, the rockery had plunged from the height of fashion to naffness, with stones and dainty alpines replaced by decking, olive trees and bamboo.

Pick & mix: The joy of great meals sprung from the garden

Sat, 27 Apr 2013 23:00:00 GMT

My mum used to have a collection of Cordon Bleu magazines that you collected week by week until you had a prize guide to the highs and lows of 1970s cooking. Crêpe Suzette! Beef stroganoff! You know the drill. (She still has them, actually: the pages are a carnival of curly Good Life fonts, chickens-in-baskets and intricate rice dishes. What was it about Watergate and Vietnam that brought out everybody's inner pilaf?)

Weekend work: Time to split autumn perennials

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 23:00:00 GMT

What to do

Spears of destiny: How to grow your own asparagus

Fri, 26 Apr 2013 23:00:00 GMT

The season for English asparagus has begun and we can look forward to six weeks' pigging out before the shutters come down again. But for proper feasts, you have to grow your own. The cost of asparagus (£4 a bundle at the start of the season) limits its pleasure. You need at least a bundle per person.

Born survivor: The ancient Chinese tree that survived the dinosaurs and the Ice Age

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 23:00:00 GMT

The Chinese are taking over. It's a fact. But today I'm not thinking of container ships from superstructured giant ports with oversized cargos of desirable goods. Actually, I'm standing in the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, looking at a tree.