My garden photography

How does a kitchen gardener choose what to grow? It’s about balancing quite a complex set of variables, which include the space and time available, the local climate and soil, the gardener’s skill level and what they like to eat. That last one is, itself, quite a complicated topic as culture plays a significant role. There are many thousands of edible plants on the planet; most people only eat a small number and grow fewer still.

Whether you made a New Year’s resolution to cut your carbon footprint, or the credit crunch is putting pressure on your food budget, now is the perfect time to try growing some of your own vegetables. You don’t need a lot of space, or expensive kit, to get started – and it doesn’t need to take up a lot of your time.

If there’s one thing that makes gardeners gnash their teeth with frustration, it’s watching their favourite plants being eaten by pests. We’ve moved on from the ‘any bug is a bad bug’ mentality, and many chemical controls are being removed from sale amid safety fears, but this doesn’t mean that we have to abandon hope of an attractive and productive garden.

The Body Shop has announced that it is creating its first show garden at RHS Chelsea this year. It’s called The Lady Garden, designed to pay homage to its “founding feminist principles and activist roots”.

A lot of new gardening and plant books have landed on my mat this spring, and I need to up my book reviewing game! I like to do them justice, and spend some time reading them before I write a review, so that does create a bit of a backlog. Right at the time when the garden is demanding my attention. Anyway, the book that has found itself at the top of the list is one that really encompasses the gardening zeitgeist – The Community Gardening Handbook, by Ben Raskin. I looked him up, and he has impeccable credentials. He’s currently Head of Horticulture for the Soil Association; prior experiences include working for Garden Organic, running a walled garden and being a Horticultural Advisor for the Community Farm near Bristol.

Plastic bottles are everywhere these days, even floating around in the oceans. Fortunately for the environment, recycling facilities are improving (here in the UK at least) but a lot of plastic bottles still end up in landfill, where they just don’t break down. If you would like to give your plastic bottles a new lease of life once they’re empty, and save money too, then try recycling them into something useful for the garden.

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault (also called the Doomsday vault) in Norway was officially opened in February 2008. During the 3 months prior to the grand opening, engineers pumped refrigerated air into the vault to bring its temperature down from a chilly -5°C to an arctic -18°C.

Now that the days are longer and the first flush of spring is over, gardeners all over the country have a chance to step back from frantic seed sowing, transplanting, digging and weeding and carry on gardening at a slower pace over the summer.

It is one of the big ironies of gardening that the pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers we use to keep our lawns green make them one of the least ‘green’ areas of the garden. Many gardeners put a lot of effort into maintaining their lawns, and this diligence can be a real asset if you want to go green, because it requires a fair amount of work to keep your lawn in top-notch condition using organic methods. The good news is that a more relaxed approach rewards you with a beautiful, wildlife-friendly lawn.

The UK has been battered by storms over the last few weeks, and the weather has been very mild – if not warm – for the time of year. It seems ludicrous to deny the fact that the climate is changing, and that this wilder weather is the result. We’ve been lucky, but gardeners elsewhere in the country have suffered storm damage and flooding. The long-range forecast threatened a cold, hard winter for the UK, but there’s no indication of when, or if, that will arrive.

One of the hottest gardening topics is how to turn your garden into a wildlife haven. Gardens are seen as a habitat of last resort for many hard-pressed species. Wildlife friendly products abound and you can buy homes suitable for any creature.

Organic gardeners aim to feed the soil, and let a healthy soil take care of the plants. The best way to add fertility to your garden is to make compost, but in most gardens there is never enough compost to go around and there will be times when supplementary feeding is needed.