Blog

So it turns out that life with plastic really ain’t that fantastic after all. Not given how little of it in the gardening world can be recycled and most of it ends up in landfill filling our earth with fragments of plastic that will take hundreds of years to fully break down. Ask any mindful gardeners […]

The Garden Media Guilds annual awards are a pretty star-spangled affair. Set in the Savoy (which have toilets that challenge the Bellagio in Vegas) its a celebratory event where journalists, photographers, producers, bloggers and other garden media folk gather to see who is crowned the winner in the categories. Social Media Influencer of the Year […]

If you’re wondering how to can attract more bees to your garden then you may not have thought of introducing a fruit tree.  At present, the UK is home to over 250 species of bee with the majority being solitary bee species. As well as increasing crop size and quality, bees play a pivotal role […]

Most people struggle with creating their own townhouse or terraced house garden as space is often too small to imagine or they try and simply cram in loads of ideas making it look cluttered. Given the lack of space and adjacent properties, my clients often complain that there’s no privacy and that space limits what […]

High impact borders can bring the wow factor to your garden. It doesn’t matter whether you have a postage stamp sized garden or a few acres, the principles are the same. Here in the Exploding Atom Garden, I’ve been planting up what I’ve nicknamed the ‘Moody Goth Border’. The aim for this border is to […]

I must admit I was intrigued when I got an email out of the blue asking to come to see some community gardens up in Bury. It wasn’t just the offer of tea, slices of cake and seeing some beautiful borders; it was the fact that these gardens had been created from scratch only a […]

Damsons are a subspecies of the Plum family and have a really high fruit rate, great for bakers out there. Now the trees themselves may not be the most elegant or attractive but they are low fuss. I only prune mine if it gets damaged or a branch is really growing in the wrong place. […]

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

Starting to garden as a beginner can be a daunting process. You search the shed and find a rusty trowel maybe a wobbly handled spade that has seen better days. They may have even been left by the last owners, too ashamed to even take them with them. You have a go at using them […]

So you may be wondering what exactly is prairie planting and why is it now so fashionable? Well, the world-famous Piet Oudolf was one of the forerunners in bringing prairie borders to the masses. His creative designs featuring informal shapes block planted with the same species or colour have become his trademark. If you’re still […]

If you’re like me and have a nightmare garden border that’s both shady and awkward then this guide is for you! I’ve recently been planting up my driveway to mixed success. It’s shaded, dry, windy and has competition from both a hedge and mature trees. It’s enough to make you give it up and simply […]

I’m going to be brutally honest in this blog post, in that I’ve wanted a greenhouse for so many years but never had space for one. I’ve wanted one so much that when I bought one a year ago it languished behind the garage, unpacked for over 12 months. The irony of getting what you’ve […]

A modern garden design style can turn a garden into a room you just can’t wait to be in. Summer evenings are spent sipping fizz out in your garden terrace, with careful mood lighting, dramatic planting and the feeling of privacy. Plants organised into blocks of colour. Everything in its place with neat lines and […]

Now I would usually argue against planting in the middle of a 30-year record heatwave. However, when you’ve got a hundred or so plants sat waiting to go in, you can’t really hold off as they frazzle in the 32-degree heat. So I’m caveating this article that where possible avoid planting in the middle of […]

It’s easy to become disheartened when you’re halfway through a project. The beginning seems a long time ago and the end seems too far off. You’re right in the thick of it, the messy bit where everything is up in the air. It’s the classic symptom of any project, the middle bit is often where motivation […]