Browsed by
Category: Top Ten Tips

Gardeners and gardening tips for the day. Hints, ideas, advice and suggestions in list form

Top Ten Don’ts in Gardening

Top Ten Don’ts in Gardening

Kew 295

Top Ten Don’ts in Gardening

  1. Don’t worry about getting it wrong, have fun and enjoy.
  2. Don’t buy expensive, exotic plants that you saw on holiday because they are better grown in hot countries or conditions (like the orchids above).
  3. Don’t set your sights on having a manicured bowling green type lawn unless you are a dedicated bowls player willing to act like a full-time groundsman.
  4. Don’t make your life too difficult. Put high maintenance plants where you can reach them and paths and stepping stones where they can give you good access.
  5. Don’t forget to keep everything looking tidy, trim lawn edges and put pots and tools out of sight (it’s what a garden shed is for as well as resting in).

    6. Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden

  6. Don’t skimp of the quality of your main tools like your spade, trowel, watering can and fork but avoid wasting cash on gadgets and gizmos.
  7. Don’t forget this year nationally frost will kill more annuals by early planting than insects will kill by eating.
  8. Don’t ignore your plants need for sunlight, water, food and a growing medium.
  9. Don’t judge your garden against the glossy pictures in gardening magazines (they will have been touched up) or from flower shows where prize exhibits will have been selected from 100’s or 1000’s of plants.
  10. Don’t let anyone put you off, garden the way you want, enjoy the results and share your enthusiasm.

Caution: Japanese Garden

Credits
Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden by pablo_marx CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
Caution: Japanese Garden by ~dgies CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Todays Top Ten Tips on Bulbs

Todays Top Ten Tips on Bulbs

3rd October 2011

Todays Top Ten Bulb Planting Tips

  1. Plant with the nose up!  (The bulbs nose not yours) The bottom of the bulb is where there is a bit of dried root.
  2. Put a marker in the ground to show where you have planted the bulb. I sometimes use some light coloured grit.
  3. Most bulbs already contain the ungrown flower inside the bulb so a bigger bulb should perform better. Choose firm healthy looking stock not dried out damaged bulbs.
  4. Plant your bulbs twice as deep as the bulb is large.  i.e.5cm bulb 10cm deep
  5. Pick a colour scheme and build a theme around that. Pinks and purples of crocus, tulips and hyacinths may work together.
  6. Alliums or ornamental onions can be planted in November or if frost free in December.
  7. Daffodils need longer in the soil to develop their root systems so get them in now.
  8. Plant bulbs in containers with good drainage holes and crocks in the bottom.
  9. Snowdrops, aconites, grape Hyacinths and crocus should naturalise well in your garden flowering year after year.
  10. After the bulbs have flowered deadhead then to channel energy into the bulb not into seed production. Leave the leaves to die back naturally.

 

Todays Top Ten Tips

Todays Top Ten Tips

September 15th 2011

  1. Sort out in your mind the plants that will need frost protection in the coming weeks. It will be too late to get and wrap plants in hessian or move plants indoors once the frost warnings arrive. Being prepared will allow you to enjoy late autumn shows without worry.
  2. If your Busy Lizzies suffered this year, loosing leaves and flowering badly you are not alone. The fungal problems of Busy Lizzies are a concern so do not compost them and plan to grow something else instead next year. Hopefully a one year gap will kill off the problem fungus which is Busy Lizzie specific.
  3. Keep harvesting your runner beans before they turn woody and run to seed.
  4. Collect any seed you hope to save from plants that have finished. Keep them in a cool place in paper bag or envelope
  5. Plant up your spring Daffodil bulbs. Tulips can be planted later.
  6. Indoor bulbs for Christmas flowering need to ‘be prepared’ or treated before you buy them. Hyacinth and Paperwhite narcissus are a couple of my favourites.
  7. Clean your bird feeding stations and plan to continue feeding through winter. I buy bulk seed and keep it dry.
  8. Look around for late flower shows and events. The Harrogate Centenary  flower show is on 16-18 September 2011.
  9. Glee, the UK’s biggest garden trade event, is on at the NEC  Birmingham  on 19-21 September 2011.
  10. Pick a bunch of Chrysanthemums or Dahlias for the house.

Chrysanthemum From Harrogate Flower Show 2010
Incurve Chrysanthemum

Garden Design Styles

Garden Design Styles

Harewood Himalayan Garden

Garden design is influenced by Location, Objectives and Resources. No two people would design the same garden for the same space nor would that garden grow and develop in the same manner.

My Top Ten Garden Styles

  1. Cottage garden
  2. Wild or Environmentally friendly garden
  3. Walled or Victorian garden
  4. Family and traditional garden
  5. Fruit and Vegetable plot
  6. Alpine, crevise or Rock garden
  7. National gardens, Italian, Japanese, Himalayan, Swiss, Spanish, New Zealand or Mediterranean
  8. Sculpture garden
  9. The Peace garden
  10. Water garden

There are so many gardens that could be designed that a top 10 list is subjective in the extreme.

    A woodland garden came very close to inclusion and is a natural feature that many want to cultivate.
    I could have selected a ‘garden of rooms’ but that is more of a technique used in many of the above types of garden.
    Specialist plantings like Rose gardens or Herbaceous gardens could have had there own spot but I had to finish somewhere.
    Public and Open gardens can have a special charm.

Let us know what your personal favourite garden is or would be.
Also let us know what type of garden you detest. For me it is a ‘car park garden’ with all or mainly hard standing for numerous vehicles and no greenery.

Todays Top Ten Tips

Todays Top Ten Tips

September 6th 2011

  1. Despite the grey overcast skies of the last few weeks there has been very little rain and the soil is dry. Water where needed, particularly the Rhododendrons that are currently filling out their the buds for next years flowers.
  2. It is not too late to deadhead your Pelargoniums ( many people call them Geraniums). They will flower until the first frost or when the daylight fails them.
  3. Pick your ripe tomatoes and strip off any remaining leaves so what little sun we get can ripen off the remainder.
  4. Order your seeds for next year. You can sow many hardy annuals, biennials and broad beans for a quick start next spring.
  5. Turn your compost to get air into the pile of summer grass cuttings and mixed waste. This reheats the rotting process.
  6. Shred or chop twiggy waste and old stems as you put them on to your compost heap to help them rot down.
  7. Tie in Raspberry canes, climbing rose stems and any growth that you think may be damaged by high winds.
  8. Clean the greenhouse glass to maximise the light.
  9. Tidy dead leaves and garden detritus that may harbor pests and diseases.
  10. Give house plants maximum light and continue with a week feed.

September Crab Apple John Downie
crab apple

Shade Loving Perennials a Top Ten

Shade Loving Perennials a Top Ten

Helebore

Plants that thrive in the shade also tend to be heavy drinkers. Here is my top ten list

Top Ten Shade Loving Perennials for the UK

  1. Bergenia varieties including Bressingham White, Baby Doll, Rotblum and Bergenia cordifolia
  2. Hosta varieties including Aureo marginata, Moerheim, Halcyon, Wide Brim and Hosta venricosa.
  3. Dicentra varieties including Boothmans variety, spectabilis and formosa Luxuriant.
  4. Astilibe varieties including Deutchland, Europa, Fire Ostrich Plume and W M Buchan
  5. Alchemilla mollis
  6. Epimedium varieties including Roseum, Pinck Colchicum and Sulphureum
  7. Helleborus Oriental hybrids or species, cyclophyllus, foetidus and purpurescens.
  8. Polygonatum giganteum or multiflorum
  9. Pulmonaria varieties including Mary Motram, Dora Bielefeld and Roy Davis.
  10. Tellima grandiflora and grandiflora purpurea

Host flower slugged

Most gardeners have a shady spot so I hope this list gives you some ideas for new varieties to try growing. Of course most of these plants will tolerate some sunshine but then need even more water to thrive.

Shade Loving Ground Cover Perennials

  • Sweet Woodruff or Galium odoratum thrives in alkaline soil
  • Anemone nemorosa Robinsoniana has a carpet of ferny leaves and white flowers that all die down in summer
  • Lamium galebdolon dead nettle a scrambling, variegated evergreen.
  • Symphytum grandifolium or dwarf comfrey has leaves that make good compost
  • Saxifraga spathularis or St Patrick’s Cabbage is evergreen but not as cabbage looking as some gardeners.
  • Vincas minor Getrude Jekyll

Lamium

Credits
Lamium by Shotaku CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Book Cover
Planting the Dry Shade Garden: The Best Plants for the Toughest Spot in Your Garden by Graham Rice
Dry Shade Perennials a Top Ten
Best Shade loving plants

Top Ten Snowdrop Gardens

Top Ten Snowdrop Gardens

Kew Snowdrops

  1. Waterperry Gardens Oxfordshire
  2. Chelsea Physic Garden London   Snowdrops have always provided one of the great delights of these openings 6th, 7th, 13th & 14th February 2010, 10am-4pm.
  3. RHS Wisley Surrey
  4. Hopton Hall Derbyshire
  5. Weeping Ash Garden Cheshire
  6. East Lambrook Garden Somerset
  7. Sherborne Garden Somerset Local gardens open for the National gardens Scheme
  8. Brandy Mount House Garden Hampshire National collection of snowdrops
  9. Easton Walled Garden & Little Ponton Hall Lincolnshire
  10. Bennington Lordship Hertfordshire

This is our selection unless you know better – if so let us know.
Snowdrop soldiers8

Check for open days in February and March for a day out to enjoy. You may also find snowdrops in unexpected locations. I snapped these pictures in Haworth church Bronte land.

Haworth snowdrops

Snowdrops in an alpine house at Harlow Carr.

Snowdrop

Galanthophiles see beauty many varieties.
snowdrop