Gardenig in Britain. Tips & Guides

Our eleventh prize is a Gold Smokebox, worth £105 from Lambton & Jackson.

Looking for a greatgardening book to read or gift this Christmas? Here’s my pick of the crop from this year’s harvest.

Day 9 of our Christmas advent prize draw gives you the chance to win WOLF-Garten’s Bypass Loppers worth £119.99.

The Isles of Scilly are like an idealised version of England – where the sun always shines, the food is wonderful, there’s no traffic and no one locks their doors! To say the sun always shines is an exaggeration, but they’re among the sunniest and mildest places in the UK – sea breezes mean it’s never too hot or humid and thanks to the Jetstream, they almost never have frost.

Hidden behind the door for day 8 of our advent prize draw is a bundle of tools from gardening brand Wilkinson Sword, worth £114.97.

Karen Delahay

Enter our day 7 prize draw for your chance to win ‘his and hers’ Buckingham wellington boots worth £109.98 from Harbour Lifestyle.

Offering some of the closest beaches to London, Essex has a reputation for kiss-me-quick resorts and dormitory commuter towns. The truth is that this flat county, defined by slow-flowing rivers, estuaries, salt marshes and oyster beds, abounds in subtle charm. The Romans settled in Colchester and evidence of their occupation can be found in many coastal settlements. In the 1560s Flemish protestants brought their silk-weaving skills to the town, while the Dutch reclaimed swathes of land for farming. 

Worcestershire provides some of the country’s loveliest scenery. With the Cotswolds to the south-east, the Malverns and the Shropshire Hills to the west and several notable rivers, including the Avon, the Severn and Teme running through it, this is a fertile, bucolic landscape that’s perfect for exploration and very conducive to agriculture. 

Boasting some of Britain’s most beautiful countryside, the Lake District, in the north-west corner of England, is a draw for anyone with a love of the outdoors. Its hills and mountains, including England’s highest, Scafell Pike at 978m, attract walkers and climbers, while in the valley bottoms, vast lakes, such as Windermere and Ullswater, invite quiet contemplation.

Our sixth advent prize draw gives readers the chance to win a variety of seed mix grab bags from Seedball, worth £105.

Robins can lose up to 10% of their body weight keeping warm over a single winter’s night. With reports that the La Nina weather system may bring harsh cold spells in winter 2022-23, added to the problem of disappearing food sources and habitats over the UK, robins – and other garden birds – could do with some support this season.

Wildlife gardening has many benefits. By growing plants, digging a pond and creating other habitats, such as log piles and compost heaps, we can provide homes for wildlife that would otherwise be homeless. There are around 30 million gardens in the UK. Potentially, if enough of us garden with wildlife in mind we can help slow down or even reverse declines of some species, like hedgehogs, right across the country.

Henry Mustin popped open the trunk of his electric Volkswagen to reveal his arsenal: Loppers, pruners, saws and trowels, tucked into bags. Taking up the most space was Mustin’s weed wrench, an L-shaped specialty tool branded The Extractigator, which leverages the ground to yank deeply rooted vegetation from the earth.

These charming birds, popular for their striking red breasts and cheerful songs, signal the arrival of spring. However, most people think that they also carry some hidden meanings. So, What Does it Mean When You See a Red Robin? Read below!

Our fifth advent prize draw comes with your chance to win a Deluxe Hedgehog House XXL, worth £124.99 from CJ Wildlife.

It can be easy to get swept up in the merriment of Christmas: buying lavish gifts and an abundance of food and decorations. And that’s before you’ve even considered the tree. But there are ways you can reduce the waste your household contributes to this year and be more sustainable by focusing on natural resources.

Our fourth advent prize draw comes with your chance to win a beautiful kiln-dried Carved Oak Rope Swing, worth £379 from Sitting Spiritually.

Enter our prize draw on day 3 for your chance to improve your garden tool collection with Henchman’s ARS KR-1000 shears worth £95.

Day 2 of our “12 Days of Christmas” advent calendar gives you the chance to win a 26cm leaf green light garden, worth £125 from elho.

This month, we’re collaborating with some brilliant businesses to bring you our very special “12 days of Christmas” prize draw, offering 12 generous prizes to 12 lucky winners throughout the month of December.

Cobra, the garden machinery experts, are delighted to offer readers the chance to win a CS1024V Li-ion Cordless Chainsaw, worth over £115.

Hardy fuchsias are commonly grown in UK gardens, and it’s no surprise – many flower from June to November and need very little care. Native to Central and South America, most hardy fuchsias survive UK winters (RHS hardiness rating H4), although some may still require protection from the harshest weather (RHS hardiness rating H3 or H2). In milder parts of the UK, hardy fuchsias can grow into a shrub up to 3m in height but in colder regions they may be damaged by frost and require cutting back to the base, from where they regrow in spring.

Cherry Ong is a frequent GPOD contributor, sharing both her own beautiful garden and those she visits on her travels. But she also helps out in her friend Sylvia’s garden in Richmond, British Columbia. Here’s a previous post about helping in Sylvia’s garden: Cherry Helps a Friend Plant a Fabulous Garden.

You’d be forgiven for thinking that the recent epiphany in gardens and mental health is a new discovery, but gardens have long been linked to good health and quiet reflection. In fact, the late 20th-century rift in our relationship with the natural world can be seen as a historical blip in an otherwise unbroken bond between man and nature. The well-documented surge in interest in the natural world during Covid was in fact a restoration of a healthier relationship that we as a society had been enjoying for centuries.

Who would be without a hellebore or two in the dark months of February and early March, when we long for the onset of spring? Their generous, characterful flowers bring colour and hope to the garden when we need it most, and they really don’t need much to keep them happy.

You can take an Englishwoman out of England, but you can’t change a deeply ingrained English garden aesthetic. Pom Shillingford has lived in America for 26 years, but she still yearns for the garden she knew as a child — her grandmother’s beloved Arts & Crafts garden in Hampshire, which she remembers always being filled with seasonal flowers. She and her husband David and their three young children moved from Manhattan to the small town of Salisbury in Connecticut in 2013. ‘I had always loved Manhattan, but suddenly I didn’t love it any more and needed to go back to green fields and the outdoors,’ says Pom.

Autumn at the garden of St Giles House

Perhaps the most beautiful of flowering trees, magnolias are adorned with luxurious, flamboyant flowers in spring and summer. These generous blooms are goblet- or saucer-shaped and a handful or more in size.

Cherry blossom on show in a west London garden by Sheila Jack

Strawflower (Xerochrysum bracteatum) is also known as everlasting flower, immortelle and paper daisy. Strawflower plants have an upright habit and branching flower stems topped with many-petalled blooms to 8cm across. Hardy annuals, strawflowers bloom abundantly from summer into autumn, in shades of red, pink, yellow, orange, purple and white. The naturally dry texture of the blooms makes them an excellent choice as cut flowers to use fresh, or in dried arrangements that will last for years. Strawflower grows quickly and easily from seed and lasts for one growing season only.

‘Marvels of Monmouthshire’ takes in the lovely scenery of this part of the world and a selection of special gardens, chosen by Sisley Garden Tours to be in their full summer glory. Many of the gardens have been featured in The English Garden magazine.

In late winter and spring, usually before the leaves appear, catkins hang from the bare branches of trees like alder, hazel and silver birch. The first known use of the word ‘catkin’ is in an English translation of a Flemish botanical guide written in 1554 by physician and botanist Rembert Dodoens. He uses the Dutch word katteken meaning ‘little cat’ which was translated as ‘catkin’. Catkins are also known as ‘aments’, derived from the Latin for ‘strap’ or ‘string’.

Caught out yet again by the sudden descent towards darkness, I had to quickly pluck a few things from the garden to make a posy for my lift-giver to choir early last week. Having been working in the greenhouse, I snipped a few blooms from the overwintering Salvia ‘Mystic Spires’ and plucked greenery from some ivy on the way back to the house. Back inside with my cup of ta and cake, I found my friend had messaged me to say she was unwell and not going after all, so the posy was no longer required. Rather than keep it in its interim jam jar, I sought a vase with a degree of sultriness to match the dark moodiness of the salvia blooms and deep green of the ivy and its curious flowers, coming up trumps with a blue hyacinth vase.

They say a picture tells a thousand words. But in the case of botanical art it’s fair to say that it’s probably far more than that, as proven by a magnificent new book Drawn from Nature: The Flowering of Irish Botanical Art by the Wicklow-based art historian and author Patricia Butler (Acc Art Books UK, £35).

There’s nothing quite like coming home to your own slice of paradise, such as a pocket of greenery in the backyard. But transforming a drab garden into an oasis is not everyone’s area of expertise and can be costly if it’s attempted without a little know-how.