Six on Saturday, Starting With an Untruth

Welcome to an exploration of flowers that start with the letter “B”. From the stunning Begonia to the vibrant Bluebell, this list covers a wide range of flowers, each with its own unique charm.

If you want to put your BBC Gardeners’ World 2 for 1 Gardens entry card and guide to good use this year, The Savill Garden is a must-visit. Set like a jewel in the heart of Windsor Great Park, it’s a garden for all seasons, always filled with colour and sights to behold, but during the summer months especially you can delight in its magnificent roses.

Although our first proper opening of the garden is not till a week tomorrow, we had a group visit on Thursday, a mixed blessing, as it meant the garden had to be more or less ‘ready’ over a week sooner than it might otherwise have had to be. We didn’t have any group visits last year, the first year that we hadn’t, and this was the first time we had a visit before the main openings as I had previously avoided this – June is probably the most floriferous month, and sometimes we could be in limbo for two or three weeks after the main openings until all group visits were over, before we could loosen the reins a little. Interestingly, this gardening group, from one of the local villages, had previously visited us the first year we opened, although all but a handful of them were new members so the garden was new to them.

There’s nothing like the clean lines of freshly cut grass. But, what if we told you skipping your final step of bagging those grass clippings can actually help you grow lusher, thicker grass—and at no additional cost to you? Allowing your mower to leave behind grass clippings can have a variety of benefits for your lawn.

National Cucumber Day is a unique celebration that brings a refreshing twist to our calendars every June 14th. This day is not just about enjoying cucumbers in their natural, crunchy form but also about exploring the creative avenues this versatile vegetable offers. Families can turn this day into a fun, engaging, and delicious adventure, strengthening bonds over the love for cucumbers.

The napkins, cushion cover and table cloth seen here in Ivy Green

Most fruits have seeds lodged deep within their fleshy innards. But Mother Nature loves her exceptions! Read on to learn about those peculiar fruits that appear to have seeds on the outside.

This photo shows European Space Agency (ESA) astronaut Thomas Pesquet floating with 1.2 million tomato seeds that launched to the ISS on 19 February 2017.

If you’d asked me a decade ago how I fare with houseplants, I would have told you, without question, the answer is horrible. Every plant I brought home seemed to die, no matter what.

Oriental poppies in any shade may look dramatic when in bloom, but don’t flower for long, flop unattractively and certainly don’t die back well. Somehow they still merit space in a border, but if they start thinking they can take over the world then they are OUT, although removing them is never as easy as one would like it to be. I have a basic fiery scarlet one, pale coral pink Papaver ‘Princess Victoria Louise’ and the more recent acquisition above, ‘Royal Wedding’. The blooms on this one seem particularly large, especially when the petals are splayed out like a frilly tutu – no doubt they will be gone by tomorrow!

I SUSPECT every gardener has for years now over and again heard the warnings about the most widely used pesticides in the United States, neonicotinoids—or neonics for short. In 2013, the American Bird Conservancy issued a report warning of their impact on terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, and especially the ripple effect their use was having on birds. The Conservancy has issued an updated report with a telling headline, “Neonicotinoid Insecticides failing to come to grips with a predictable environmental disaster.” So where are we now with limiting the use of these pesticides and what can we as citizens and gardeners do to help in the effort?

Kim Cornelison