7 Evergreen Climbers for Shade - Fantastic Gardeners Blog UK

‘Marian Sampson’ hummingbird coyote mint

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

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.

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