Choosing, planting and keeping things alive.
150 guides in Garden
Window boxes are the hardest container there is — shallow, exposed and often in a rain shadow. The compost mix, planting density and feeding regime that keep one going all season.
Four observations that separate the two, and why getting it wrong means either pruning off a whole year of flowers or letting a plant swallow a wall.
Nursery pots are sold by volume, garden centre pots by width, and neither number tells you what you expect. What each size really holds and why one step up buys so little.
What shade actually costs you in fruit, which crops accept it, and the north-wall fruits — Morello cherries, cooking apples, gooseberries — that are genuinely productive without full sun.
Wind and sun scorch is almost always the answer on Japanese maples, and the position matters far more than anything you feed or spray.
Why coriander runs to seed faster than any other herb, the root disturbance that triggers it, and the sowing regime that gives leaf all summer instead of three weeks of it.
The natural early-summer shedding that alarms people every year, how to tell it from the drops that are a real problem, and what to do afterwards.
Four causes account for nearly every case of small fruit — too many of them, too little water, too little light, and an old congested spur system — and all four are fixable.
Why a layer of gravel or broken pot in the base makes drainage worse rather than better, and what actually controls how a container drains.
Rod and spur pruning explained — the permanent rod, the spurs cut back to two buds every winter, the summer stopping, and the one deadline that must not be missed.
Choosing varieties that produce repeatedly, and the cutting and conditioning that makes them last in a vase.
Where to cut on each kind of herb so it branches instead of stalling, why picking regularly produces more than picking carefully, and when in the day the flavour is strongest.
Blackcurrants fruit on last year's wood, so pruning means taking out the oldest third at ground level every winter — the opposite of how gooseberries and redcurrants are treated.
Vine eyes into mortar joints, the standoff that lets a plant breathe and a twiner wrap, sensible wire spacing, and the hinged-trellis alternative when the wall will need maintenance.
The liner that makes a timber planter last a decade and the almost identical one that rots it in two years — where the liner stops, where the holes go, and why the base is different from the sides.
What wind actually does to a plant, the leaf and growth characteristics that survive it, and why filtering the wind beats blocking it.
Lime-induced chlorosis in blueberries — how tap water causes it, why it looks like a nutrient shortage when the nutrient is present, and the permanent fix.
Transplant shock is a supply problem, not an illness — what to do in the first fortnight, and the three mistakes that turn a wobble into a death.
Blueberries need acid conditions, rainwater, a second variety for cross-pollination and consistent moisture — and a poor crop nearly always traces to one of those four.
Telling sun scorch from disease, chemical damage and frost, and the pattern that identifies each in a couple of minutes.
Six causes in the order worth checking — plant age, nitrogen, frosted flowers, runners, shade and pollination — with the black-centred flower that identifies frost damage instantly.
How a tree gets locked into cropping in alternate years, why a frost or a heavy crop starts it, and the blossom thinning that is the only reliable way out.
Plums flower early and heavily, which makes frost the usual culprit, but pollination groups, biennial cropping, aphids and a shy young tree all account for their share.
Telling clematis wilt from drought and from slug damage, why a wilted plant usually recovers, and the planting depth that makes it survivable.