At first light the first woodpecker comes. And then the female pheasant. With or without her fat comic mate. Feeding under the feeders. I always overfill and scatter nuts and seed around for ground-feeding birds. Crush a few more fat balls to be sure. They are a pair, the woodpeckers, the exhilarating flash of scarlet, …
Winter chores include keeping the birds well fed | Gardening advice Read More »
To me it’s one of the perpetual mysteries of gardening: why some plants, despite appearing to really have it all, somehow still languish away from the horticultural spotlight. Very near to the top of that list must be Hellebores, with their exotic blooms opening up as if by magic in the dead of winter. Their …
The winter wonder of hellebores | Gardening advice Read More »
AAfter a seemingly interminable winter, this weekend is finally a good time to start planting up window boxes, and with two handy tips, you can have them churning out a conveyor belt of color right up until the first frosts. Gardening in containers offers a range of benefits. It frees you up to grow plants …
A window box brings joy and spring colour | Gardening advice Read More »
North Saanich nursery owner says she rarely sees Lonicera fragrantissima on plant lists from her growers Dear Helen: Is winter-flowering honeysuckle (Lonicera fragrantissima) rare? I’ve never seen it in any of the gardens I’ve been in. We’ve enjoyed our shrub for 20 years. It begins flowering in late December and continues until March or April …
Garden advice: Winter honeysuckle a must for fragrant garden Read More »
Large, used water bottles with the bottoms removed used to great effect in ‘winter sowing’ project I’ve been spending most of the long winter evenings thinning out the overcrowded drawers of my two filing cabinets. I’ve accumulated files on a multitude of gardening topics and added to them as I come across new and useful …
Garden advice: ‘Winter sowing’ gives food crops a head start Read More »
An email last month sent me back in time to a small outdoor gathering of friends. It was June. As we chatted and nibbled on mango slices, I glanced across the lawn and spotted a pot bearing an unlikely plant — a blooming amaryllis. The thick flower stalk topped by a cluster of imposing red …
Gardening advice: Amaryllis flowers can thrive outside Read More »
Summertime! And the living is uneasy. After two years of keeping clear, Covid catches up with us. First Henri and then me. There is fever and coughing, like flu. But the sun shines. The magnolia is alive with bloom and we count ourselves lucky. We have a steady supply of Lemsip and Strepsils and …
I had to chase an order from Garden Gear, a sister company of Thompson & Morgan, and was put on the customer service line. It turned out to be a Premium Rate number and I was billed £ 25. I pointed out that it was illegal to use these numbers for customer service and asked …
