2-for-1 Gardens Card & Guide 2023 - BBC Gardeners' World Magazine

Helianthus annus ‘Sonja’

Plastic bottles are everywhere these days, even floating around in the oceans. Fortunately for the environment, recycling facilities are improving (here in the UK at least) but a lot of plastic bottles still end up in landfill, where they just don’t break down. If you would like to give your plastic bottles a new lease of life once they’re empty, and save money too, then try recycling them into something useful for the garden.

There’s nothing quite as British as a nice cup of tea, and sitting down for a good cuppa can certainly brighten up your day. A tea bush is unlikely to thrive in most UK gardens (although there are a couple of tea plantations) because of the climate, but there are plenty of herbs that are easy to grow and make a refreshing brew. They’ll even grow well in containers – so they make ideal plants for a windowbox or a patio. Having them close at hand means you can harvest leaves as and when you need them.

If you’ve got a small garden then you might find it difficult to find space for a conventional compost heap. A possible solution is a worm compost bin, which takes up far less space because an army of worms does most of the composting work.

If there is one thing I am truly grateful for during this extraordinary time, it’s my garden. Not only is it producing harvests for us and reducing our reliance on our over-stressed food system, but it’s somewhere we can step outside and be surrounded by nature, without having to worry about social distancing. 

I don’t generally watch Gardeners’ World these days, but two weeks ago they broadcast a special edition (episode 20 in this year’s series) as part of the BBC’s Big British Asian Summer, exploring South Asian influences on British gardens. Monty Don ‘hosted’ the show from the stunning gardens of Europe’s first traditional Hindu temple, BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir in London. The stonework for the temple itself was all carved in India, then brought to London to be assembled. Flowers, particularly the sacred lotus, are represented throughout the decorative motifs. Mountains of flowers are used in the temple’s religious ceremonies, and I was intrigued to learn that – in India – there are businesses based around recycling temple flowers into products such as incense sticks, soaps, and eco-packaging, to reduce their environmental impact. At the London temple, the gardens are a fusion of a European parterre-style design, with Indian motifs, colourful flowers, and a delightful lack of symmetry.

In Once Upon a Time I Lived on Mars, Kate Greene talks about Shannon Lucid, the NASA astronaut who spent six months living on the Russian space station Mir. Shannon, it turns out, was a bookworm. During her stay, she read 50 books and improvised shelving from old food boxes, complete with straps to stop the books floating off. This was in 1996, a good decade before the invention of the Kindle, and so these were real books. She apparently chose titles with the highest word to mass ratio, since launch weight is a critical factor! Lucid left her library behind for future spacefarers, but it burned up when Mir was de-orbited in 2001.

What kind of traveller are you? Do you prefer to lie in a hammock slung between two palm trees, reading the latest blockbuster novel? Or would I find you soaking up the local culture along with the sun? I’m more of the latter, and it helps to know a smattering of the local language if you go off the beaten track!

Collaborative post

Marsha Arnold

Mary Ann Van Berlo has been gardening on this 2.4-acre riverfront lot since fall 2012. The yard was still a construction site when she moved in, so all the gardens were installed after that.

Outdoor Christmas decorations are key in creating a cheerful and festive ambience during the holiday season. Whether you’re going all out, making your house and garden the envy of the street with elaborate light designs and displays, or you just want to welcome your guests with a simple hand-made wreath and some soft candle glow, we offer you suggestions on how to decorate a garden for Christmas to lift spirits and make warm memories during the cold days and nights.