Bbc Ideas, Tips & Guides

Six DVD’s in a boxed set ‘A Year at Kew – The Collection’ (Series 1-3) with Alan Titchmarsh is available from Amazon  in time for a Christmas gift. Over 1000 minutes of gardening in a month-by-month journey via the BBC through the world’s greatest botanical garden.

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.

1. The Promoter is Immediate Media Company London Limited (company number 06189487), Vineyard House, 44 Brook Green, London W6 7BT (“Immediate”). The competition is sponsored by Weetabix Limited (company number 00267687) (t/a “Alpen”).

Gardens of the Year 2024, sponsored by Alpen, is now open for entries and we want to see beautiful readers’ gardens of all styles and sizes. If you’d love to see your garden featured in BBC Gardeners’ World magazine and be in with a chance of winning a fantastic holiday prize, enter our exciting competition now. We’re looking for gardens from all over the UK – no plot is too big or too small. Previous finalists have included flower-filled allotments, tiny urban balconies and sprawling country gardens.

Join us on Tuesday 9th July 2024for an exclusive tour of Highgrove Gardens, the private home of TRH King Charles III and The Queen Consort, followed by a Prosecco and canapés reception, a seasonal three-course lunch and a talk by BBC Gardeners’ World host, Alan Titchmarsh.

With the return of BBC Gardeners’ World just around the corner, Monty gives us an update on the recent changes at Longmeadow. He shares some of his favourite areas to spend time in in the garden, reveals which section is the heart and soul of Longmeadow and explains some of the planting and design choices he’s made.

Join David Hurrion on a 12-night cruise from Portugal to France, discovering enchanting gardens along the way, like the forest garden of Fonte Baxa and the gardens of Pays d’Auge.

IMMEDIATE MEDIA COMPANY LONDON LIMITED

I’ve checked the BBC weather app and it looks like we are not due anymore frost which is brilliant. This means a couple of things…..firstly Summer is very nearly here thank goodness, and secondly I can start to plant out my tender crops!! Yay!!

Now I’ll work in rain, but not heavy rain. We were woken up before the alarm goes off at 6.30am by rain hammering down on the Velux windows. Would it clear by the time I was due to leave at 8.45am? Well that was anyone’s guess. I watched the weather forecast on BBC Breakfast and apparently it was supposed to. However, the BBC app on my phone said otherwise. The rain did stop, but then started again, just out of spite as I was leaving home. I arrived at my clients house, and we had a little discussion about what to do. We all came to the sensible conclusion that I should call it quits and go home, so I did.

Ernesto Ruscio / Contributor / Getty Images

When you’re working on DIY projects it can sometimes be useful to have a tool that can do more than one job. Cutting, sanding, polishing, and scraping, the best multi-tool can perform all these tasks, so to find the outstanding tools in this field we reviewed two different types of multi-tools. Oscillating multi-tools that move a blade or sanding head back and forth, and rotary multi-tools that spin cutting discs or polishing mops around at high speeds.

Adam Frost is always happiest in his veg garden, enjoying the thrill of harvesting his own fresh homegrown veg. But what he loves even more is cooking this homegrown bounty – creating delicious meals with produce taken straight from plot to plate. In this podcast series he talks to Cassie Best, food director of BBC Good Food magazine, for inspirational recipes to help him and you make the most of your homegrown vegetables.

February is a good time to finish any winter projects before the growing season starts in earnest. There are still a few weeks left to complete any winter pruning and get bare-rooted trees in the ground while plants remain dormant. Vegetable beds can be prepared this month and snowdrops divided once they come to the end of their flowering period. Inside the house, start chitting potatoes and sowing chilli seeds to give plants a long growing season.

Would you believe we’re now going into our third year in our ‘new’ garden? I’m not sure where that time went!

In this exclusive video for BBC Gardeners’ World Magazine subscribers, Adam Frost takes us on a private tour of his garden.

If you’re looking for some new tools to help you in the garden then Black Friday is a great time to get them. The sales event sees hundreds of retailers cut prices on thousands of products so there are plenty of bargains to choose from.

What is Squirrel?

Whether travelling the world with Monty Don, making your garden look great all year with Nick Bailey, growing winter veg with Rekha Mistry, or celebrating Christmas with Joe Lycett, this winter series is full of seasonal treats. You’ll be inspired to get out in the garden, as well as finding plenty of excuses to stay indoors when the weather is less appealing. Listen to new episodes, every Thursday.

Google the name “Monty Don” and the resulting list of endearingly odd questions that appears on the screen is eye-opening in terms of what it reveals about the public’s fascination with this charismatic, Cambridge-educated British gardener, writer, broadcaster and host of BBC’s Gardeners’ World.

A good pair of garden shears can make garden tasks quick and easy to tackle. They’re essential for the proper care of hedges, shrubs, and lawns, helping to keep them in tip-top condition. Unlike secateurs, which are designed for pruning single branches, garden shears can tackle several branches or blades of grass at once. There are a couple of different types –

When creating a stylish and relaxing garden we often tend to think of perfectly tended flowerbeds, expertly trimmed topiary and carefully selected garden furniture. Whilst these all help to create a stunning garden it often takes something out of the ordinary to add the finishing touch and create a truly unique space.

BBC Gardeners’ World Spring Fair returns to Beaulieu, in Hampshire on 3-5 May 2024. Book your great value tickets now with 15% off, or 20% off for Gardeners’ World Subscribers (see below) and look forward to a great day out!

BBC Gardeners’ World Live 2024 is back at the NEC from 13-16 June, alongside the BBC Good Food Show Summer. Be an early bird, book your great value tickets now and look forward to a great day out!

Vote now, and pick the garden you’d like to win this year’s People’s Choice award for the Gardens of the Year Competition 2023, sponsored by Yeo Valley. Take a look at this year’s finalists, and vote for your favourite below. Voting closes at noon on Monday 6 November.

Secateurs and loppers are handy pruning tools but for thicker branches a pruning saw is the tool for the job. The last resort before you need a chainsaw, a pruning saw has a toothed blade capable of cutting branches 5cm thick and above and many different shapes and sizes are available, from compact folding saws that fit in the pocket to long, straight, fixed blades that need a holster to keep them safe. All have a high carbon steel blade, and many have been designed to cut a particular type or thickness of wood. As a rule of thumb, the longer the blade the thicker the wood it can cut, but strength of blade, sharpness of teeth and how long they stay sharp, as well as grip and comfort will all affect how easily and well a saw will cut.

Monty Don is one of the nation’s favourite gardeners. For nearly twenty years, Monty has been lead presenter on BBC Gardeners’ World, the beloved television programme which inspires this magazine.

When it comes to pruning season, trimming and shaping trees and shrubs with thick, woody growth can feel like a daunting task. While your secateurs and other essential gardening tools may not be up to the task, a strong pair of anvil garden loppers is more than capable of tackling tougher trimming jobs. Used with with both hands their long handles make them ideal for cutting branches up to 50mm thick and if you’re pruning dense dead wood, then a pair of loppers with an anvil blade is the tool for you. Cuts are made as the top blade slices through the wood onto the flat anvil base. They can crush stems as they cut and although bypass blades make cleaner, more precise cuts, anvil blades have greater force. They are ideal for clearing dead branches and making the first cut on thick branches before removing them cleanly with bypass loppers or a saw. Loppers are available with telescopic handles that extend for greater reach and most have an additional cutting mechanism to help you cut thicker wood with less effort, helpful for those with less strength and for very tough wood.

Secateurs are an indispensable tool, essential for tidying up around the garden. While tools like hedge trimmers and other cordless garden tools are ideal for taking on heavy duty tasks, secateurs are a simple, hand-held tool used for keeping on top of pruning, dead-heading, cutting back perennials and harvesting fruit, veg and flowers. Available as bypass, anvil and ratchet, each type is designed for a particular job:

In the autumn months it’s glorious to see the leaves turn from green through to golden brown but once they start to fall and cover our gardens, it’s a different matter. While those that settle on bare ground in the veg patch and in beds can be left to rot down to act as a mulch, piles of leaves on lawns, borders, paths and patios are best cleared away to prevent them becoming a hotbed for pests and diseases or creating a dangerously slippery surface once the wet weather arrives.

Watering can be an everyday task in summer, but to ensure you use only the water you need, and that it goes just where you want it, a spray gun attached to the end of your hose is an essential piece of kit. With as many as nine different spray patterns, including a shower setting for watering borders, a mist for fragile plants and a jet spray for cleaning or filling buckets, they’re equally at home lightly misting seedlings as they are washing down a path. A hose spray gun can make light work of the most common gardening watering tasks and turn the garden hose into one of the most important tools in your garden.

It’s a classic British summertime scene: the sun’s just peeked out from behind the clouds, the temperature’s barely in double digits, but all along the street there’s the delicious smell of smoky, charcoal cooked food.

November is an ideal time to plant bare-root trees and shrubs now they have become dormant, providing the ground is not waterlogged or frozen. It is also a good time to plant spring-flowering bulbs, before the wintery weather sets in. During the colder months, gardens provide important habitats for wildlife, so remember to fill up bird feeders and leave herbaceous perennials as they die back so the dead leaves, stems and seedheads can provide shelter for animals such as hibernating insects.

A well kept, manicured lawn is a point of pride for gardeners and maintaining it should be one of the easiest tasks in the garden. There’s a huge choice of different mowers on the market but electric corded mowers are the most common and one of the easiest to use. They’re quiet, light and easy to manoeuvre plus they’re clean with no fuel fumes or regular servicing needed. They’re also the cheapest, but do you get what you pay for? To find out if paying less means you lose out on features or performance our gardening experts tested a range of corded electric lawn mowers that won’t break the bank.

A lawn mower may be one of the first purchases we make when getting a garden of our own, but that doesn’t mean finding a good quality one is easy. There are so many models and brands on the market to choose from, including corded electric and petrol, but as their range increases and prices fall, cordless, battery-powered models are an increasingly popular option.

Choosing the best lawn mower can be a tricky task, with so many models on the market and such a wide range of brands. There are five main types of mower available at hugely varying prices and all with different features that need to be considered.