Best fire pits in the UK for 2023

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Home-grown peaches are well worth the extra effort involved in growing them, as their fuzzy, juicy fruits taste better than any peach you can buy in the shops.

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.

We’re back with more from Susan Esche’s visit to the beautiful University of British Columbia Botanical Garden in Vancouver in early September. It is open to the public and has many different sections and types of gardens to explore.

We’ve visited Susan Esche’s home garden before (A Garden Wedding, the Flowers, and the Deer), but today she’s taking us along to visit a public garden in Vancouver, British Columbia.

There’s around 100 species of helicona, most of which are evergreen perennials native to tropical Central and Southern America. Their enormous glossy leaves are similar to banana plants and can grow to 120cm long. As heliconia can’t be grown in frost prone areas, there are few regions where these plants can be grown outdoors, although some varieties could be placed outdoors in summer. Heliconia flowers come in shades of red, orange, green and yellow.

Header image: An artist’s depiction of a fictional Mars colony, with solar arrays and underground greenhouses. Image credit: NASA

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With the wide and exciting range of gardening products out there, it can be difficult to think of the best gardening gift ideas for birthdays, Christmas or any other special occasion.

Buying someone a bouquet of flowers is a sure way to bring a smile to their face, as well as brighten up an entire room. They make an ideal gift and it’s now easier than ever to give them, thanks to the numerous online flower delivery services that make it easier to send flowers from afar.

Garden border maintenance in both autumn and spring is mainly about the plants.

I first learned the fundamentals of kitchen gardening from my mother, who learned it from her father, a passing-on of traditional skills repeated down through countless generations.