Woodcare this Winter

Weather the winter with top tips from the woodcare people, Ronseal .

With the onset of wintry weather just months away, leading woodcare manufacturer Ronseal are urging people to act now in order to protect their homes and gardens from the elements.

Just a few simple steps and some carefully chosen products are all it takes to ensure that both interior and exterior woods are fully protected and ready for whatever the weather has in store.

1. Protect wooden garden furniture against cracking, splitting and discolouring with a long lasting, protective stain such as Ronseal’s Hardwood Furniture Stain. This will protect the wood against the elements and also offers a three-year guarantee, meaning next year you can just sit back, relax and let Ronseal do the work!

2. Decking areas are one of the most vulnerable in the garden. Exposed throughout the winter months, decking has to be able to cope with all manner of weather conditions so it’s important to prepare it well. Ronseal’s Perfect Finish High Traffic Decking Stain is waterproof so it protects against rain, frost damage, cracking and peeling. The advanced formulation also protects against knocks, scuffs and scratches whilst the UV filters prevent greying and maintain colour for longer.

3. The winter months are notorious for being grey and bleak so why not protect your garden wood with a product that will also add a splash of colour. Ronseal Woodland Trust Colours are a range of wood stains suitable for use on all types of garden wood including furniture, fences and sheds. Available in eight natural tones, including Bluebell (blue), Fern (green) and Bramble (red), each colour is wax enriched and offers up to three years of protection.

4. Ronseal’s One Coat Sprayable Fencelife provides an easy and convenient way to combat fence rot and water decay brought on by winter climates. With its wax enriched formula it protects your fences from the effects of the weather, whilst advanced resins and light-fast pigments ensure superb coverage in just one coat. What’s more, when applied using a Ronseal Power Sprayer, your treatment time is shaved to just two minutes per panel. Perfect for when the nights are closing in!

5. Prepare exterior doors, window frames and cladding for winter with Ronseal 5 Year Woodstain. Available in a choice of eight colours, this easy to apply stain is rainproof in just one hour and delivers five years of protection. Highly water repellent, it also resists cracking and peeling and, when the summer eventually arrives, it will protect your timber from the sun’s harmful UV rays. Top tip: Ensure you treat the top, bottom and sides of doors to keep moisture out and prevent bowing and warping.

6. Autumn and winter are also the best times of the year for doing those interior jobs that you didn’t get round to doing during the summer. Ronseal Perfect Finish Varnish is the easiest way to achieve beautiful interior wood and comes with a Perfect Finish pad and can be used on either large flat surfaces or small intricate areas. The unique varnish pad deliver a super smooth finishfree from brush marks, ensuring that you always get a perfect finish. Ronseal Perfect Floor Varnish is also available for areas of flooring.

Ronseal products available now from Amazon

Path Cleaning and Cleaners
Garden Disinfectants
Best Weed Killers
Wood Care
Fence Care

Chihuly Glass Garden Art

These freeblown functional and sculptural glass works floating in Atlanta Botanical Garden were designed by Dale Chihuly

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)by robholland, on Flickr

Comment

• Glass is a great product to use in garden design and sculpture
• Protect your delicate glass sculptures from heavy frost
• See more on glass installations by Dale Chihuly

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Gazebo and Garden Tent Types

Spring showers, Autumn rain and Summer storms can all spoil our enjoyment of the garden.
For those planning a garden party or just informal drinks a Gazebo may be the answer.

Low Cost – Good Value Gazebos

• Surprisingly you can get a self assembly, steel framed gazebo from B&Q for £17. It measures 10 foot by 7 foot and is powder coated steel in white.
• The Arran gazebo is a big play tent 10′ by 10′ costing £30 from Homebase or a striped model is £80 from Tesco
• Pop up Gazebos from Tesco, Webbs and Greenfingers are from £70-£90. Guy ropes and pegs are included.
• Side walls may be appropriate but remember this will increase wind resistance so watch the weather.

Upmarket Gazebos

• Skye garden party gazebo from B&Q costs £99 and measures an impressive 30′ by 10′. It is enclosable on all 4 sides.
• Totally open sides with a pyramid shaped roof looks elegant in the Sumba model from B&Q.

Gazebos

available from Amazon are shown here

What is a Gazebo

• Gazebos are an ornamental garden feature with international connections.
• Used to provide shelter from strong sunshine, breezes, insects and light rain they are constructed in numerous styles and from a variety of materials.
• Tent-style structures of poles covered by tensioned fabric are detailed above along with example suppliers.
• Gazebos can have a range of alternative names including; pagodas, pavilions, kiosks, belvederes, follies, alhambras, pergolas, and rotundas.

Thanks to poluz, on Flickr for the first picture and increasing our international connections. Visitors from 34 different countries have read our blog in the last week.

Also to nicpic, on Flickr for the Bespoke gazebo that is the top tip for those with big gardens and aspirations.

Gardening Book of the Month September 2011

The Bad Tempered Gardener by Anne Wareham with photographs by Charles Hawes emphasises why I am often bad tempered in my own gardening efforts.

‘Anne unflinchingly conveys the challenges, the hard work, triumphs and failures behind the creation and development of a substantial contemporary garden’. There is plenty of resource material to call on from her development of a contemporary garden at Veddw in Monmouthshire. Anne displays her interest in the history of the local landscape and has incorporated this into the garden design.
Charles the photographer and husband of Anne is a member of the Garden Media Guild and the Professional Garden Photographers Association.

Amazon

Poundshop Pots and Cheap Pots

I am an extravagant shopper throwing my pounds away on all sorts of garden related offers.

This plastic pot was only £1 and I wish I had bought several more. It was probably designed as a holder for 5 individual pots.
I drilled holes in the bottom and using well drained but moisture retentive compost I planted it up with these miniature Hostas. It will keep the slugs at bay and provide a home for the Hostas to increase in size. Fortunately I had some red alpine grit to decorate the top and it looks OK with the terracotta plastic colour.

I could have put gravel or Hortag in the bottom and used it for pot plants but I would probably have let them get waterlogged.

Warning on Cheap Pots

• Make sure there is enough drainage. Pots sometimes have too few holes or none at all.
• Pottery pots may not be frost proof and even terracotta pots and earthen ware may crack and split in freezing weather.
• Ceramic pots need to have been fired at high temperatures (expensive energy) or they will chip and have a short life.
• Cheap plastic pots may be made from thin material that flexes, cracks and distorts when full of wet compost

Related articles
Poundshop bulbs
Growing tips for miniature Hostas

Cuttings in a Tray or Open Ground

Tips For Cuttings

• I mix compost with Perlite and fill a 24 cell tray for small cuttings.
• This green plastic tray is supported by a rigid plastic seedtray. This cuts down sterilisation but I use the green trays several times until they crack or need throwing away.
• Bottom heat can help cuttings root more rapidly.
• On some Rock Roses (Helianthemum), I have just used hormone rooting powder from amazon.
• I keep the atmosphere humid with a clear lid and or a regular spray of clean water.
• The cuttings do not need any fertilizer until roots show at the bottom of the cell.
• When roots start to show, pot-up into individual pots or plant out in the garden.

Larger Cuttings

• 3″ pots or 12 cell trays can be used for larger cuttings like pelargoniums.
• Pelargoniums do not need any hormone rooting powder.
• For hardwood cuttings I would take a longer piece of material 4-8″ in many cases. For this size you need a deeper and more stable pot to hold the cutting
• Last autumn I took some Rose cuttings and put them in a trench filled with soil and sharp sand. Several have rooted nicely and are now ready to be set out in the garden.
• I do not get despondent if cuttings fail. If cuttings succeed I am hapy to get true clones of the original plant at no cost

Fuchsia cutting tips
Root Cutting Tips
Delphinium cutting tips
Carnation cutting tips
Autumn cutting tips
Dahlia cutting tips

Equipment Every Gardener Needs

The first and most essential item of equipment for a gardener is a sense of humour. How else can they expect to cope with weather, insects, disease and death. If you have had an endorphin bypass then give up gardening and take up nuclear physics or something else equally less challenging.

An assistant gardener is a bonus piece of equipment and hidden in the shrubbery is my no.2 helper. (My wife is no.1 as she cuts the grass, edges and much more).

Some ‘gardeners’ have a professional to do the hard work and this doesn’t disqualify them as gardeners but the armchair variety is not as hardy as the all weather species.

Equipment for Gardeners

Lawn Rake with tines that can collect leaves and hedge trimmings from grass or in this case paths. A long handle on most garden tools makes life easier.

Ear Muffs are not strictly essential garden wear but if you use noisy machinery for a long period they would be worthwhile. Hedge trimmers, wood chippers and some lawn mowers are noisy and so are the sounds of these tines on the path.

Jeans and Boots are part of many gardeners clothing kit. Boots keep you dry and have a protective upper, but according to Billy Connolly were would you be without wellingtons

Wet Water Features

Water features are designed to be wet or so you might think.
There is a breed of water feature that I think are ‘wet’ in the pejorative sense. That includes these ball shaped fountains above and other plastic bubbling devices.

Water Features In Order of Preference

• A natural lake with soft edges, fish and water lilies.

• A stream and streamside gurgling along a chalk bed. I would tolerate a man-made stream with pump if it appears natural.

• A gothic or monumental fountain as a centre piece to a colourful garden.

• Elegant birdbath

• DIY store ‘dribbling device’ see below

Gardening Book of the Month August 2011

Gardening For Dummies – UK Edition by Sue Fisher, Michael MacCaskey and Bill Marken is not to be underestimated. You get what you always get with the Dummies series expert advice, helping the novice get a solid start.

For the summer months you do not want to be stuck reading a detailed treatise on how to grow exotic garden plants. Better to have a book you can dip in and out of during the August break from gardening chores.

‘The seasoned gardener will be able to broaden their breadth of knowledge, learn and develop skills in how to do everything from planning your planting to controlling pests – and everything in between. Full of useful illustrations and insider’s tips this book will be a vital reference for everyone with an interest and love of gardening, whether you have a few containers in the back yard or a huge back garden with a rolling lawn.’ Amazon

Peripheral Gardening Professionals

Garden Media Guild formerly the Garden Writers’ Guild aims are to raise the quality of garden writing, photography and broadcasting, and keep members up-to-date with events in the world of gardening and horticulture.

Professional Garden Photographers claims to be ‘The Leading Source of Specialist Plant & Garden Photographers, showcasing the work of over 100 Professional Garden Photographers’

The Society of Garden Designers To tie with the SGD’s 30th anniversary celebrations, Open Gardens will see 30 gardens designed by Registered Members (MSGD) and Fellows (FSGD) of the SGD, open across the UK, celebrating the best of British garden design over the past three decades.