Blog

It can feel daunting and uninspiring to try and garden in the winter, especially if you are a beginner or have just bought your first garden. Knowing how and where to start gardening can be enough to put you off from even trying. If you’re thinking of just waiting to see what pops up in […]

If you’re considering starting a meadow, no-mow zone in your lawn or mini meadow in your garden, the yellow rattle is a vital plant ally you need to grow! This plant will help reduce the competition and vigour from native lawn grasses, enabling plants to flourish that otherwise would be overshadowed in the garden. So […]

I get a lot of emails and comments from new gardeners who really want to garden but have no clue where to start. They don’t know what they’re doing and panic that they will mess it up! This is known as the fear of failure in gardening. So, I thought it was about time we […]

When I started this gardening blog, I was on a simple mission: to help inspire, educate and encourage all gardeners to succeed in their green spaces. One of the most exciting groups of gardeners I help is beginners or new gardeners. However, there are several common mistakes that all new gardeners make unless they have […]

This guide from guest writer and gardening enthusiast Rosie Buckley gives the Garden Ninja community some top tips when planning any hedge cutting. As birds are a vital part of our garden’s ecosystem ensuring we don’t disturb them is key to clean hedge cutting. This page contains affiliate links for products I use and love. […]

Recycling is a key part of the Garden Ninja ethos when it comes to gardening. So I was pleased to hear from my good friends over at J.Parkers, one of the North West’s oldest nurseries and online plant suppliers, about a number of recycling tips they had. Here’s the advice they have to help improve […]

Spring flowers show the first positive signs that spring is just around the corner. There is nothing nicer than getting through the winter and seeing a mix of spring bulbs emerging in the garden. Winter Aconites (Eranthis) and Snowdrops (Galanthus) are the first early bird bulbs to spring up. It brightens up our gardening days […]

No matter what size garden you have, encouraging wildlife will help create a diverse environment on your doorstep. This will not only benefit your plants via increased pollination but also welcome a host of wonderful creatures from insects, butterflies, bees, birds and mammals. Building a DIY bug hotel can also help encourage your children to […]

As small garden trees and fruit trees grow each year, the risk of lower branches becoming too heavy to support the fruit is a real concern. If you leave these lower branches to continue to grow and bear fruit, the likelihood is they will start to droop to the flower and could tear themselves off […]

Now that your seeds have germinated, you may suddenly struggle to work out what to do next. Well, the next stage in growing your own plants is known in the gardening world as ‘pricking out‘, where we take seedlings and separate them into their own pots. If we don’t prick them out, they get congested, […]