La Sylphide, Mr Fokker & Sarah Raven

Iris ‘Benton Olive’ in Sarah Price's garden

Struggling to keep your house plants looking healthy? Or just keen to buy heavily discounted house plants, confident that you can bring them back from the brink? Sarah Gerrard-Jones, aka Instagram’s The Plant Rescuer joins us to explain everything you need to know to successfully care for and revive your favourite indoor plants.

Jay Wilde

After making its presence felt in the year 2019, this dark beauty has become quite popular since then! Check out our complete guide on Raven ZZ Plant Care and How to Keep it Jet Black!

Outdoor Freesias are another Sarah Raven success story.  They have flowered all summer and are still throwing up a few flower stems.  I’ve moved a co

Not just for a posy or to look at either – you can safely add the petals to your salads or puds as I learnt when I attended Sarah Raven’s lecture on dahlias at her Perch Hill garden.

Our fruit cage is cobbled together from various metal poles and some distinctly scrappy netting, erected (after a fashion) on our sloping allotment, so I felt deep envy when I visited Sarah Raven’s garden at Perch Hill and viewed her immaculate fruit cages.  Properly spaced bushes, not a weed in sight, ample room to move around and pick the fruit, flat ground – they were everything ours is not. Still our fre

There’s still time to get plant supports in place, before everything gets too large, develops a mind of its own and heads off in directions that may suit it – but doesn’t add to the beauty of the garden. With this is mind, I recently attended a Staking & Supports course given by Sarah Raven, whose garden at Perch Hill could not be bettered when it comes to plant supports, the majority of which are made from natural materials. Coppiced chestnut, willow, hazel and silver birch are all used to create sturdy and decorative frameworks to keep plants upright or support them as they climb. Anyone planning to plant a cutting garden would find the course invaluable – and I now know how I can do it better next year. The most important thing I learnt is that my bundles of coppiced silver birch need to be taller if I am going to create the tall, elegant structures that we made at Perch Hill, rather than the short, dumpy ones that I’ve managed at home. I get my silver birch from the man who supplies our logs and up until now he has cut them to the length that will fit in the car – I will ask for them to be delivered in future. According to Sarah, the best suppliers provide the materials to build Point-to-Point hurdles, but you need to be living a very rural life to have them nearby. My coppiced silver birch is too

Blueberries are a tasty and beautiful addition to any home garden. Unfortunately, you’re not the only one that enjoys a plump blueberry – you might need to deal with insect pests and local wildlife.Additionally, there are a number of pathogens that can cause

What do I Have in Common with Monty Don & Sarah Raven? We are all devotees of the Japanese style workwear made by Kiraku Clothing – Monty’s blue denim jacket and Sarah’s tunic are both made by Kiraku who have now branched out as The Garden Clothing Company and have a stand at the Hampton Court Flower Show. If you aspire to looking stylish when you garden (at least some of the time) but need something durable – these are the clothes for you – and me.

In the past I haven’t grown enough broad beans, so this year I’m planning a bit of  successional sowing.  I’m already a bit behind on the game – because of the hard landscaping work I couldn’t do an autumn sowing – but starting next week I will sow some in the ground as well as some in pots as insurance against mice predations. I’ve gone for three different varieties – Thompson & Morgan’s ‘Express’ which has an AGM and is apparently the fastest to crop, then ‘Stereo’ from Sarah Raven which produces small tender pods that you can eat in their entirety, and finally ‘Greeny’ from Mr. Fothergill’s which is a lat

The soil at Sarah Raven’s Perch Hill garden is heavy clay, so it is top dressed with copious quantities of gravel and mushroom compost. With the rec