a way to garden’s top garden stories of 2016

Gardening for some provides the daily bread, for others, it’s an escape from reality and for you, it might be your favourite hobby. Nevertheless, a garden decorated to your own preferences will act as a source of inspiration and will provide you a place to gather up your thoughts.

A butterfly garden (or butterfly habitat) is a place dedicated for butterflies to feed and hydrate. It also helps butterflies find shelter, as many of their natural habitats are being lost due to human activities and urbanisation.

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.

If you’re anything like us, then you love your dog and want to include them in as many of your daily activities as possible. Every dog owner has experienced the joy, frustration, and laughter caused by our four-legged friends who decide to help us complete a task and, in most cases, create even more chaos as a result.

Water is the source of all life, but too much water can cause significant problems even in the garden space. For instance, surplus water can promote root rot and diseases amongst plants.

It is often said that beauty lies in simplicity. Rock gardens are the very embodiment of that saying. With a bit of thoughtful planning, what initially may seem like a bland mixture of rocks and plants can, in skilled hands, quickly turn into the peaceful retreat that any home needs.

Ants. Love them or hate them, it is undeniable that they are amazing creatures. With large, complex societies, fungus-farming techniques and an empire which almost spans the entire globe, it is a blessing that they are so small and have not yet developed an overwhelming collective intelligence.

Britain has some of the best gardens in the world. The choice of which to visit is far larger than this selective list but at least it gives you somewhere to start planning this years outings.

A happy and pleasant surprise has just arrived through the post at home.

Is your garden safe from petty crime? Unfortunately in recent years garden theft has been on the rise. Plants, furniture, metal objects and statues can all be  attractive to thieves. Our local police  circulated this timely reminder on how to ‘nip crime in the bud’.

Native to Mexico and Central America, the dahlia (Family asteraceae) is a bushy and beautiful flowering perennial. The dahlia is Mexico's national flower, and its tuberous roots were eaten by Aztecs before the Spanish Conquest. Following Central America's colonisation, the dahlia was exported to European nations, where it thrived even in countries with harsh or cold winters. Since the 18th century, botanists, taxonomists and gardeners have held a certain fascination for the flower, identifying over 850 different species each with unique petal or stem structures (this number includes the plant's hybrids, too). Since dahlias are extraordinarily varied in appearance, they also tend to be categorised by the shape of the flower, with 10 categories that include anemone, peony, pompom, ball, decorative, cactus, single and waterlily.

When I started this series of K.I.S.S. gardening advice, I hoped to inspire those who didn’t know where to begin gardening and those who may have lost joy in their gardening pursuits. After all, there are plenty of things to worry about these days, and gardening should not be one of them. Gardening should provide a respite and an escape from our screen technology culture. So let’s take the advice of Willie Nelson’s boy, Lukas, and “Turn off the news and build a garden.”