The 50 best gardening accounts to follow on Instagram | House & Garden

27 of the Best Dahlia Varieties for Your Garden

Did you know that you can use shower curtains in your garden to add depth to small spaces, and cover a bland wall or fence? Here are some cool ideas for doing it right!

As we bid adieu to the frosty winter, March arrives with a burst of color and a tantalising promise of warmer days. It’s the perfect time to dust off those gardening gloves and let your inner green thumb run wild (if you haven’t already).

A solar water feature is a wonderful addition to the garden, bringing the relaxing sound of a babbling brook into a residential space. Solar water features also have the added benefit of being much better for the environment than their mains-powered counterparts, using clean energy that won’t cost – or harm – the earth.

We’re back enjoying part two of Cherry Ong’s visit last June to the garden of perennial gardening expert Pam Frost on Vancouver, Canada. Cherry visited as part of a tour organized by the Vancouver Hardy Plant Society.

In a world increasingly focused on sustainable living, the choices we make extend to every corner of our lives, including our outdoor spaces. When it comes to garden furniture, the term "sustainable" goes beyond a mere buzzword – it's a commitment to a greener and more ethical lifestyle.

15 of the Best Gardenia Varieties for Your Garden

Charlie on his balcony

There’s no denying that gardening is an occupation that throws up a lot of questions, but garden design apps can help. Whether you’re new to it or a seasoned, green fingered pro, big projects like landscaping or planning a garden from scratch need a lot of information along the way (which a garden designer can help with if you have one, but these apps will help if you don’t) but it’s the smaller issues like plant identification or concerns about flowers that are equally tricky and it can be a nuisance to dig out a book to help you.

This is a purposeful moment in the vegetable garden. Spring is in the air and I’m gearing up for the busiest time of year. You can start sowing hardy crops such as broad beans, chard, beetroot, lettuce and carrots. But the weather and soil can still be cold in March, so only sow seeds outdoors if you are feeling confident it is warm enough. Alternatively – and, I think, preferably – you can start sowing these crops under cover, either germinating them indoors and growing them on in a cold frame, or in a greenhouse. Sowing seeds in trays and modules gives you more control, as you can plant them out as seedlings rather than taking the risk of leaving them to germinate in the ground. A compromise is to sow seeds in raised troughs, where the soil will be warmer and you can cover them with cloches or panes of glass to protect them further. However, onion sets and garlic can be planted straight out in the garden now.

The beautiful balcony plants on the terrace at the London house of Henrietta Courtauld of the Land Gardeners

They say that you can tell a surprising amount about a gardener by the kind of potatoes they grow. Some of us, for example, are traditionalists who’ll plump for the floury, fluffy ‘British Queen’ (colloquially known as ‘Queens’) every time. Others are passionate foodies who prefer the firm, waxy, flavoursome, yellow flesh of a salad potato such as ‘Charlotte’, or the heirloom ‘La Ratte’. Individualists, meanwhile, often like to seek out unusual kinds, such as the dark magenta-fleshed ‘Vitanoire’, or the knobbly ‘Pink Fir Apple’, the heritage variety famed for its more-ishness.