Gardening Diary
Friday, March 12, 2010
GARDENINGMOTHER’S Day approaches and woe betide the son, daughter or husband who forgets to thank mum for all she does.
Friday, March 12, 2010
GARDENINGORCHIDS have a very bad reputation as difficult to keep alive.
Not so, they really only require the minimum attention to thrive because they demand so little and give so much.
Friday, March 12, 2010
GARDENINGNOT the most glamorous of Mother’s Day gifts, but a fruit tree can be a peach of a present, or the apple of her eye.
Friday, March 12, 2010
GARDENINGTICKETS go on sale today (Friday) for this year’s Robin Hill Garden Show.
Friday, March 5, 2010
GARDENINGI WAS hungry for a taste of Hungary and I hoped my potato-growing efforts would not be blighted as disastrously as they were a couple of years ago.
Friday, March 5, 2010
GARDENINGVENTNOR Botanic Garden is starting to look its best.
Boasting plants from all over the world, evening primroses, rock roses, palms and echiums grow in shallow soil on bare stone, which mimics the harsh landscape of the Mediterranean.
Friday, March 5, 2010
GARDENINGCHEERS to Mrs A. Shaw, from Northwood, for this tip.
Named for their shape and not their growing speed, hosta ‘bullets’ should be emerging and now is just the time to deter slugs.
Friday, February 26, 2010
GARDENINGJAMES and his giant rhubarb always gave me a tinge of size envy.
His sticks were proud and erect, up to waist height, aided by full sun and copious quantities of horse manure applied in quantity each year.
Friday, February 26, 2010
GARDENINGIF you would like to get ahead early with seed sowing there are some vegetables you can start now in a heated propagator.
Friday, February 26, 2010
GARDENINGTHE Royal Horticultural Society is being assisted by Ventnor Botanic Garden Friends’ with the Jekka McVicar lecture planned for the Riverside Centre.
Friday, February 26, 2010
GARDENINGMY feature on the Island’s historic yew trees went down very well in some quarters, especially with the IW Council’s countryside section, which puts together the excellent series of Histree Trail booklets.
Friday, February 26, 2010
GARDENINGTHE gardening year traditionally begins with a spring clean and Jeyes Fluid is one of those most atmospheric, memory-jogging antiseptic smells.
Friday, February 19, 2010
GARDENING
SOMETIMES, by chance, interesting plants just come my way.
Carol Houghton’s mystery thornapple sparked an interesting response from J. G. Watson, of Newport, who said Thompson & Morgan’s cultivar deserves a spot in a border or as a patio focal point.
Friday, February 19, 2010
GARDENING
FEBRUARY can be a dull, dour, old month but the blessing is it’s the shortest.
It is time to plan and sow many things but outside there is little cheer.
Friday, February 19, 2010
GARDENING
IT NEVER rains but it pours for those poor allotment folk at Northwood.
Not only were they flooded out during the winter but now they have been told to leave in September, just 18 months after the landowner made the field available.