Blog

Gardeners are a patient group. After sowing seeds you need to wait and let mother nature take over. Constantly tapping your toes, staring longingly at those seed trays for any signs of life waiting for seed germination. For some annuals its relatively fast maybe a week, yet for other herbaceous beauties, they make you wait […]

The Exploding Atom Garden is based on a concept of the layers of an atom firing out from a red hot core. To symbolise these layers I’ve decided to use Gabions to represent the shards of this Garden Explosion. Given this garden is using very soft landscaping techniques for the borders and grass pathways; I […]

Sowing seed is probably one of the most exciting parts of gardening. Ask any gardener or allotmenteer and seed selection then sowing is high on the list of favourite gardening activities. I’ve recently written a handy guide on how to sow seeds, so if you’re new to the seed sowing party maybe read that first […]

It’s amazing to think that most of the plants in your garden can be grown from tiny unassuming seeds. These little pods of life allow plants to propagate themselves and spread joy with us gardeners wanting to grow our own. The beauty of sowing seeds is the sheer variety of plants that you will have […]

I’m a massive fan of Ornamental grasses in the garden and fans of my work will see I incorporate them wherever I can. They require very little in terms of nutrition, will tolerate a number of soil types and can provide interest for around 10 months of the year. Grasses look great in groups and […]

I’ve already detailed the issue with plastic plant pots and containers in the garden. Even when conscientious gardeners pop them in their recycling bin, more often than not councils won’t recycle them. In fact 87% of those councils that could recycle plastic plant pots don’t. Frustratingly most of these items then become ‘single-use’ and end […]

Herbaceous perennials don’t require the care and attention of annuals or bedding plants as the majority of them are fully hardy (there are exceptions as with anything). Meaning they will happily survive underground during the harsh winter frosts. Arising again in the spring to dazzle us with their offerings. However, most people struggle to know […]

Roses are the quintessential English garden plant. You would be hard pushed to find someone who doesn’t have a fondness for the Rose. Whether it be that bridal bouquet, valentines day or visits to English country gardens; the Rose is one of the most iconic garden flowers. However, the beauty of Roses also comes with […]

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 […]

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 […]