Green and Red Compliment your Spring Garden

Winter season doesn’t mean you have to turn your back to your flower garden until spring comes. There is a good number of plants that bloom beautifully even in the coldest of weather. Let’s dig into their world and see which ones you will fancy.

Georgia O’Keefee painted some brilliant portraits of red Poppies some times upto 3 feet wide and high, even bigger than the real thing in my garden.The last photo shows how Red and Green work well together on a canvas or in a garden setting. Oriental poppies are perennial and most Poppy species are easy to grow from seed of which 50 varieties are available from Thompson & Morgan

Lovely climbing rose on the front of this house

Cornwall and the west coast of Scotland have some fine temperate gardens well worth a visit but Yorkshire has the grandeur of the stately home garden.

In the Georgian period of the 1700’s John Aislabie set about landscaping a water garden at Studley Royal near Ripon. Today it is a verdant green garden with ornamental lakes, cascades and vistas to take the breath away.

Mildew is an airborne fungus that requires wet weather and warmth to come to life. It is most visible during spring and autumn as the winter is too cold and in summer it may be too hot. The wetter spring and autumn is when the white powdery mold-like mildew shows up most.

Greens are vibrant in your garden during spring and with careful plant selection good foliage can be grown throughout the seasons.

To coin a phrase ‘Sustainable Gardening is for Life not just a passing fancy’. It is easy to drop sustainable gardening when it gets tough but here are a few tips to help you stay the distance.

When God became the first gardener after creating the earth and heavens he noted that ‘no shrub of the field had yet grown on the earth, and no plant of the field had yet sprouted, he had not caused it to rain on the earth, and there was no man to cultivate the ground.’

Lavender fields are impressive, not just because of how incredible they look, but because of the feeling of calm and peace they create that is so hard to find elsewhere. That relaxing property is just one of the many reasons why we love to grow this plant at home, but lavender is also wonderful when used ornamentally. Couple this with its soothing effect and charming aroma, and you start to scratch the surface of its many, many uses.

We are well and truly into festival season, but for some of us the allure of live music and days of partying is cancelled out by the huge crowds, shared facilities and mandatory camping. So why not bring that festival back home and create a wonderland in your garden for entertaining friends and relaxing, far away from the madding crowd?

When most of us have a hankering for nuts, we tend to look no further than the pantry. It’s totally normal for nuts to be stored in the dark corners of our cupboards, with many taking residence there for what can turn into many months (especially if you shop in bulk). But did you know the pantry is actually not the best place to house nuts and seeds?