pressing plants, with herbarium curator linda lipsen

As winter gives way to the warmth of spring, there's no better way to celebrate the changing seasons than by filling your garden with an array of vibrant colors and fragrant blooms. Planting spring flowering bulbs is a time-honored tradition that adds beauty and charm to outdoor spaces across the UK. Whether you're an experienced gardener or just starting out, this guide will walk you through the process of planting spring flowering bulbs for a breathtaking garden display.

On the hunt for the ultimate garden centre or service in the UK? It's not just about jazzing up your garden – it's all about crafting your very own green paradise! 

Invasive Plant Species in New York pose a significant ecological challenge. These non-native plants disrupt local ecosystems, outcompete native species, and threaten biodiversity.

As my collection of native plants grows, I’m developing various favorites. One of them is Pennsylvania sedge (Carex pensylvanica), a sweet, compact native perennial that offers a wispy texture to a garden, is a host plant for butterflies and moths, and can be used to replace a traditional lawn. In this article, I’m going to share some growing tips, as well as ideas on where to plant Pennsylvania sedge.

Lavender is a lovely and popular flowering herb. The lavender I grow in my garden isLavandula angustifolia, also known as English Lavender. The variety I have is called Hidcote, which is a relatively compact lavender with deep purple flowers. Versatile and easy to grow, this lavender is a useful wildlife attractant on the sunny fringe of my forest garden.

Hailing from South Africa, agapanthus can be evergreen or deciduous; the deciduous varieties are the most hardy in this country. The evergreen varieties grow in the southern Cape in milder areas, so will need frost protection in the UK – or they can be grown in pots and brought inside.

The British have a bit of an obsession with the Mediterranean. It's tantalisingly close, yet sufficiently different that the moment the EasyJet tyres hit the tarmac, we feel transformed and instantly a bit more glamorous.

It has been a difficult spring for gardeners, and their plants, here in the UK. If you’re lucky enough to have the space (and funds) for a greenhouse or a polytunnel then that goes a long way to protecting plants from the vagaries of the weather, but for everyone else cloches are a good solution to the problems it brings.

I’m not a chemist, but I do find plant chemistry (and the links and patterns between different plants) to be a fascinating topic. Fortunately there are chemists out there who can bring these to our attention, and Compound Interest includes some great plant-related infographics amongst a wider spread of chemical topics.

I’ve always been fascinated by the Home Front, the enlistment of every man, woman and child in the British Isles in an effort to beat Hitler through food rationing, making do and mending, salvage, growing your own and basically making the most of scarce resources with elbow grease and endless ingenuity. I’ve just read Eggs or Anarchy by William Sitwell, a biography of Lord Woolton who was the Minister of Food for much of the Second World War. He was in charge of ensuring everyone got fed, and improving nutritional standards was one of his aims. It’s unusual to get the ‘behind-the-scenes’ view, and the political situation wasn’t as united as may appear from our rose-tinted histories.

The problem with elections, with votes of any kind, is that the process is inherently divisive. Whatever the result, there are winners and losers. The majority picks the direction we will take, for a little while, and everyone else just has to make the best of it. Given human nature, it seems like there’s a constant battle between tradition and progress. We’re all voting for a better world, we just disagree about what that means.

I’m lucky enough to live reasonably close to the Earth Trust, an organisation that aims to offer people life changing experiences that reconnect them to the natural world. They have lots of free and reasonably-priced events for both children and adults, and welcome lots of school and other groups to their HQ alongside Wittenham Clumps (a lovely vantage point from which to get a good view of Didcot!). Over the weekend I went to a workshop they had organised entitled ‘Cordage and Fibres‘, which promised to show interested parties how to make rope and cord from nettle, hemp and flax. It also aimed to explain retting, scutching and heckling.