What Is the Slow Flowers Movement? Learn About This New Trend

Philip Donkersley, Lancaster University

Peter Estersohn

Learn About Pear Tree Pollination

Like honeybees, bumblebees visit flowers to collect pollen and nectar to take back to their colonies to feed the developing brood.

In the cold wet winter it is a good time to plan where to visit as the year improves. The South West is the obvious place to start your visiting tour of gardens containing exotic plants.

A bit of light relief for a dark corner! Spreads well but easliy controlled like butter (take a knife too it..

When I first started exploring roses, I thought myself to be pretty educated once I knew the difference between a David Austin and a Knock Out. And then I discovered a whole new world of

With a few exceptions, apples (Malus x domestica) need a nearby friend so they can pollinate each other and subsequently develop fruit. You can’t just plant one tree a

Here, at the beginning of 2022, some of us may resolve to make meaningful life changes. At midnight on December 31st, marketing campaigns switch from ‘indulge in holiday cheer’ to ‘new year, new you.’ For me, after the past two years, the wellness industry can keep their diets and gyms, and the self-help industry can sell their ‘ten-step program to be the best version of me’ to someone else. These days, I’m over here just trying to be.

A. gigas is a star of high-to-late summer, with 6-to-8-inch domed flowerheads of the darkest wine color in much of August or longer. But for me the show begins them those insane-looking buds form, always prompting garden visitors to ask “What’s that?” Indeed.This most dramatic of angelicas wants moist soil, and is adaptable in my area to sun or shade, but seems happiest in bright shade (the old happy medium of gardening conditions).To have a successful colony, as with any biennial, you need to be vigilant and not accidentally weed out your self-sown babies each spring. You also will need varying generations of plants: some at blooming age (one year old) and some babies (to bloom next year). So I suggest to get started you buy yourself some p

1. That all the mail-order providers I have used send me my “slips” (pieces of vine sprouted off their stock sweet potatoes) much too early. Yes, I may have few hard frosts after late April or early May…but the weather is by no means as settled nor the soil as warm as a sweet potato would ideally have it. I want my slips to arrive a month later than some stupid automated calculation at the growers is apparently indicating, triggering my too-soon shipment. Just say no to early delivery; hurrying doesn’t help.D.I.Y. for Starters?2. If I had healthy, firm stock left from the previous year—and no sign of any disease or troubles last growing season—I could technically sprout my own slips, and it may just come to that. I’d need to get some of the stored potatoes to begin to sprout in