Every climate has its problems. In the interior and in mountainous regions, winter comes early and stays late, much to gardeners’ frustration. This may explain why gardeners in cold climates often create beautiful gardens. They may be the result of long winter nights spent planning and dreaming. Read the rest of this entry »

A successful landscape needs a garden style which appeals to you, and this is often linked to the house design. It can also be influenced by the kind of plants you like, or by your garden site and its climate.

Garden styles

There is a variety of garden styles, from formal to cottage garden, each with its own atmosphere and character. A predominantly natural or wild garden might look best in the country, or, alternatively, it could turn a town garden into a green oasis and bird sanctuary. A Mediterranean courtyard style would suit a small garden or echo Spanish-style architecture. You may like a formal garden for its symmetry, or an oriental garden for its serenity. Read the rest of this entry »

These are the essential tools, used during soil cultivation, sowing and planting.

• Fork For digging heavy soils, breaking down rough-dug soil and for light surface cultivation. The head of a full-size four- tine fork measures 30.5 x 19cm/12 x 7¹/2in; that of a small border fork measures 23 x 14cm/9 x5 1/2 in.

• Hoe For surface cultivation, particularly to eradicate weeds between rows of plants. There are two basic types: the Dutch Hoe, which cuts horizontally through the soil; and the Draw Hoe, which is used with a chopping action (particularly recommended for stony or heavy soils, and also for making seed drills). Both have 1.5m/5ft handles. Read the rest of this entry »

High summer, when everything in the garden is blooming and burgeoning in competition, is the time when window boxes should be planted very boldly. Colours in the summer must be bright to compete with the sun or perhaps make up for the lack of it.

Red geraniums and dark blue trailing lobelia are something of a horticultural cliché but for effect against stone or stucco they can hardly be bettered. As a change from the red geranium—like ‘Sprinter’, which is massed outside Buckingham Palace every year—you can have ‘Cherie’, which has soft salmon pink flowers and deeply zoned leaves, or ‘Ringo Salmon’, which is almost orange, or ‘Rose Marie’, a really intense pink. If your house is built of brick avoid all the colours and choose white, either ‘White Orbit’ or ‘Iceberg’, which will look asking if they would like them. Few would be so stunning. In fact when choosing geraniums thechurlish as to refuse, and most would be delighted to golden rule is to shop around because newer, moreexciting colours are introduced every season. When you have found a geranium in a shade you like, mass it for maximum effect. Read the rest of this entry »

Fences and hedges can form either internal divisions or the external boundaries of your plot. Gates will always be the ins and outs of a garden. As with many of the other elements of the design, the range of options is enormous, but here again your choice should reflect the general style of the surrounding composition so that the development of your garden has continuity.

In many cases the choice between a fence and a hedge can be an entirely subjective one. A fence is quickly erected, offers immediate screening and has an average life of between lo and is years. Read the rest of this entry »

A formal pattern suggests symmetry in which one side or part of a garden or design is identical to the other. While this is not always strictly true, we tend to think of a formal design as one that is built up from geometric elements rather than free-form shapes, displaying a strong degree of visual control and stability.

As far as pools are concerned, the geometry can be square, rectangular, circular, triangular or even a combination of these elements. Formal ponds are usually surrounded by a coping of some kind, even if they are set within an area of soft landscaping in the form of lawn or planting. They may form a set-piece within the larger setting of a courtyard, sunken garden or parterre, and will associate particularly well with decorative features such as statuary, topiary or regularly placed urns and ornaments. Read the rest of this entry »

As a gardener I was a great trial to my husband and I marvel now that he was so patient with me. He wanted me to concentrate on the straightforward things like delphiniums and lupins instead of odd things which he thought were not so rewarding. He had little interest in small, unshowy plants that I liked to try, and liked a good return for his money. The only way I could get round this was to keep up the fiction that I did not buy plants and anything new that appeared in the garden had been given to me. It wasn’t that he minded the cost, but he took the line that as I did not look after properly the plants that I had (i.e. didn‘t water the dahlias enough) it was silly to keep getting more plants. Read the rest of this entry »