Can anyone name this plant please as I have lost the label -thanks
another picture of it:-
Can anyone name this plant please as I have lost the label -thanks is a post from: Gardening News
Posts Tagged ‘garden’
Vineyard of 20,000 vines in Sark
Sark may not be the first place you think of when it comes to wine, but that may all change as a vineyard is developed on the island.Vineyard of 20,000 vines in Sark is a post from: Gardening News
A question from emeraldashborer.info
Dave Smitley...The following email question was routed to me from www.emeraldashborer.info. I am answering it here in the Landscape Alert because I am sure many others have similar questions.A question from emeraldashborer.info is a post from: Gardening News
Frost protection
Bert Cregg...Our unseasonably warm March and April has lots of folks sitting on pins and needles. As we watch trees and shrubs continue to push new growth or get ready to push growth, the prospect of a killing frost looms like a big, dark cloud. Most trees and shrubs that have not yet broken bud should be able to handle temperatures into the mid-20’s without significant damage.Frost protection is a post from: Gardening News
Grubs gone wild
Dave Smitley…European chafer grubs have been eating turf roots like mad, causing some spring damage to turfgrass in some places. The damage appears as patches of thin or dead turf, or even bare soil. White grubs can be confirmed as the cause by digging-up the top four inches of soil around the edges of the damaged areas and looking for C-shaped white grubs.
Grubs gone wild is a post from: Gardening News
Bill Finch: Start simple on vegetable gardens
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Bill Finch: Start simple on vegetable gardens is a post from: How to Vegetable Garden
Another Great Reason to Grow Marjoram
After weeks of winter weather that has included snow, frosts, ice, hard ground and very cold winds it has been a joy to be able to get back into the garden again if only for a couple of days.In those couple of days I have been able to get on with some real gardening. What do I mean by real gardening? The answer may come as a surprise when I say starting to clear last year’s debris from the herbaceous borders, pulling up any weeds that have managed to survive the winter months, gathering leaves and cutting out and dead spotted on shrubs while weeding. I have heard so many people say that they enjoy planting up a border but hate the maintenance that follows. I can understand but gardening is not just about planting. Just like a room in the house the garden needs a bit of TLC to keep it looking good, how you plant will determine how much time you need to put into the regular tidying. I plant quite densely so most of my work is late winter / early spring clearing the borders before everything starts to put on a spurt and cover the soil.
Along the edge of one border I planted marjoram (oregano). The golden leafed form is a plant I would not be without; it is like a ray of sunshine in the garden and has the benefit of small but masses of beautiful flowers. Also along the border edge I have the larger varieties with much darker green leaves and these again have a mass of flower. The idea of the planting was to have them close to the kitchen and be handy when required for cooking, so much nicer than dried oregano. This has worked well but there is yet another advantage of growing marjoram. As part of my cleaning up the borders exercise I have been weeding around the marjoram plants and cutting off all the old flower stalks and the smell of marjoram that has surrounded me has made the job such a pleasure.
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- How to Vegetable Garden - How to vegetable garden each month of the year with hints and tips on a variety of vegetables
- How to Vegetable Garden in January - Seasonal hints and tips on how to vegetable garden in January
- How to Vegetable Garden in February - Seasonal hints and tips on how to vegetable garden in February
Another Great Reason to Grow Marjoram is a post from: How to Vegetable Garden
Dan Pearson | Gardens
A cutting garden is your chance to tear up the rulebook on planting – so mix lights and brights with fragrant posies and wild one-offs
This year I am planning two cutting gardens. The first and smaller of the two is to be planted this month; the second is being built this winter, with the aim to have it up and running for annuals by the summer. In many ways a cutting garden is an extravagant idea, because cutting flowers is the most luxurious way of enjoying them at close quarters, but I have no intention of either of these gardens feeling like an indulgence. They will be workmanlike and take their aesthetic from the vegetable garden or the allotment. You should be able to harvest flowers as you would a row of beans, and leave with an armful – and not the slightest twinge of guilt.
A friend and fellow designer in America has been making cutting gardens for some time, by simply fencing off an area from the garden proper. Within these vermin-proof enclosures, Edwina's vegetables, herbs and flowers are lined out in rows, with paths wide enough for a barrow to pass between them. The paths are mulched with pine needles in her own garden, as she has a wood of pine at the back, but it could just as easily be bark to keep things simple. Everything is reduced down to the most practical way of growing things: the tallest plants are at the back, so they don't put the shorter plants in the shade, and there is not a care in the world for colour – if Edwina likes it, it works. Where most garden owners would never dream of trusting you with a pair of secateurs to pick a posy for the table, it is a different thing for Edwina, and it is standard practice to be issued with a couple of buckets – one to fill with spuds and beans, the other with as many flowers as you see fit to liven up the table for lunch.
In planning my cutting gardens I have enjoyed a certain freedom, with plants that are not easily worked into the garden proper. Because as soon as you pick a flower and take it out of context, it becomes an object that you can look at for itself. Dahlias with stripes suddenly become an option – if the stripes don't work this year, then something else will next. Likewise, if you want to grow "Blue Moon" roses for their scent and curiosity, then do so – a solitary flower will be a delight in a bedside jug.
Having a brief is important, because the cutting garden needs to work hard if it is to be truly productive. The larger the area is, the more relaxed you can be about plants that might bloom only once. Bearded iris can be enjoyed without having to worry about the remaining 11 months of the year, when they are doing little more than leaf. And if you have enough room for peonies, there's the creaminess of the "Duchesse de Nemours", which, picked in bud, will rupture to perfume a room. In a decent-sized cutting garden, a whole row of once-blooming Anchusa azurea "Loddon Royalist" can easily be accommodated as a luxury, but in the main the plants should be doers, and able to come again after they have been harvested.
Planning for a long season of flowers (or several seasons) is important, so we are using modern English roses from David Austin to extend the season. We have chosen varieties that are disease resistant, as we want to run the cutting gardens on organic principles because they are close to the fruit and vegetables, but we have been free with colour as long as there is scent. We are also intercropping, using lines of Alchemilla under the roses, as "Lady's Mantle" is good filler in a vase.
The rest of the perennials are set out in rows one metre apart. Within the rows they are planted in a double line, a foot apart, and the gaps between the main rows are planted with bulbs, so you can fill a jug with tulips and not hold back – or worry that they might not come back a second year. The tulips can be dug out after they have flowered and replaced with annuals – Scabiosa atropurpurea "Chile Black", wild gloriosa daisies (Rudbeckia hirta) and mixed cosmos where a mix would never do in the flowerbeds. Whereas the perennials might take a couple of years to come to cropping well, the annuals will provide for you in a matter of months.
The smaller of our two cutting gardens is in the country, so we have decided to go two ways with the brief. The first is to use highly ornamental flowers that are in contrast to the rest of the garden, which feathers to hedgerow. There are lilies in rows that can easily be picked over for lily beetle, blowsy chrysanthemums and dahlias for the autumn. In contrast, the second route is to use plants that have a super-nature quality about them: vivid thistles such as Eryngium "Electric Haze" and Cersium rivulare "Atropurpureum", and the peachy-flowered recurrent Geum "Princess Juliana" to work in among a bundle of native grasses or cow parsley. There will be giant daisies such as Leucanthemum "T E Killin", larger-than-life Scabiosa caucasica "Blausiegel" and rows of Michaelmas daisies so that you can fill a room with them come the autumn.
It is an exciting prospect planning a garden with freedom in mind – our very own trial ground and a place where gardening can break the usual rules. ★
Reader offer Observer readers can take advantage of this offer on flower seeds suitable for cutting. This superb collection contains the following: Delphinium "Pacific Giants", Eryngium alpinum "Superbum", Dahlia "Pompon" mixed, Honesty Purple and White mixed, Lavender "Hidcote", penstemon mixed colours, Sunflower Hallo, Sweet Pea Incense mixed, Shasta Daisy "Alaska" and Cosmos "Sensation" mixed. One collection costs just £9.88, saving £9 on the normal retail price. Buy two collections for £17.76 and save a further £2. Call 0330 333 6852, quoting ref OBDP141, or send a cheque made payable to Observer Reader Offers with your order, to Observer, OBDP141, Rookery Farm, Joys Bank, Holbeach St Johns, Spalding, PE12 8SG. Price includes UK mainland p&p. We reserve the right to substitute any varieties for others of equal or greater value. Dispatch will be within 28 days, supplied as packets of seed
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Dan Pearson | Gardens is a post from: How to Vegetable Garden
Use paint to make a splash
Posted by mgervais
In the vegetable garden at Tower Hill Botanic Garden in Boyleston, Massachusetts, a bean tower isn't just functional, it's a colorful focal point. Welcome to the Fine Gardening Garden Photo of the...
Use paint to make a splash is a post from: How to Vegetable Garden
Vegetable gardening trend likely to maintain momentum
Garden Writers Association Foundation survey suggests edibles will remain big in 2010Vegetable gardening trend likely to maintain momentum is a post from: How to Vegetable Garden
The Urban Plantaholic’s Kitchen Garden
I said in my last post back in August that we may return, and that has proved to be at least partly true. I am back with a new sponsor; Quilted Velvet having decided not to participate in the shows this year. Not, they assure me, a decision that had anything to do with my slightly eccentric designs. Everyone involved agreed our three show gardens were a great success.
Now it's time for something completely different. As I announced on my personal blog, Pea Soup and Pork Pies, to be found at www.tonysmithgallery.com, I am now working on an Urban Garden at Chelsea for Easigrass, the artifical grass company.
The Urban Plantaholic’s Kitchen Garden is a post from: How to Vegetable Garden
How to Vegetable Garden in February
How to vegetable garden in February? Well of course that depends upon whether you are to the north or south of the equator. For those vegetable gardening north of the equator it is still very much winter but now that the days are getting longer there is the promise of spring in the air and [...]
How to Vegetable Garden in February is a post from: How to Vegetable Garden
How to Vegetable Garden in January
How to vegetable garden in January, garden ideas for the month of the year when the weather can be dark, bleak and cold. Let us be honest, the inclement weather of winter gardening does not encourage us to do much in the vegetable garden.
The garden soil may be frozen or too wet to work and [...]
How to Vegetable Garden in January is a post from: How to Vegetable Garden
How to Vegetable Garden in December
How to vegetable garden in December with hints and tips about growing vegetables and herbs.
If November has not been very cold and affected crops and the ground we can be fairly sure that December will make up for it.
The calendar may say it is the end of the year but us for gardeners it is [...]
How to Vegetable Garden in December is a post from: How to Vegetable Garden
Everything You Need To Know About Growing Your Own Vegetables?
Everything you need to know about growing your own vegetables, now there is a bold statement. The first question you should be asking is whether it is possible to teach you everything and whether it is really necessary.
Firstly the desire to create a home grown vegetable garden is truly commendable and the right thing to [...]
Everything You Need To Know About Growing Your Own Vegetables? is a post from: How to Vegetable Garden