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May 2019

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If you have a large area of the garden to cover or are simply looking for plants to fill in some gaps between larger plants, it’s important to find the best plants for groundcover. These range from plants that grow wide without a great deal of height, for example, the evergreen shrub Vinca, to those that grow a little wider and a little higher, such as Cotoneaster horizontalis. They are a great way for suppressing…

Heuchera, also known as Coral Bells, is a traditional foliage plant and today it brings with it many different varieties, some of which come in the most amazing colours. Heuchera plants create round mounds and they have a woody crown at the base with bell-shaped flowers on the ends, which is where their common name of coral bells derives from. The leaves are evergreen in milder parts of the UK, even if they get covered…

Lupin flowers produce some of the most breathtaking masses of colour. They have sturdy, erect spikes from which flowers are produced and the fan-shaped foliage emerges horizontally. The flowers are very similar to those you would find with sweet peas because they grow in densely packed groups. The colour of the flower spikes ranges from pink to white, deep blue, purple and even yellow. This is a fairly long-lived perennial that doesn’t require a great…

Sweet peas are, as their name suggests, very sweet not only in production but in fragrance, however, it’s the annual varieties that are known for their amazing scent. You can also get perennial sweet peas that come back year after year, but many of these aren’t that fragrant. Thankfully growing them is quite simple. They are easy to grow from seed, planting in autumn and overwintering them in a cold greenhouse or cold frame. You…

Apple trees should be pruned yearly, usually between November and early March when it has dropped all of their leaves for the winter. You want to remove around 10-20% of the overall canopy evenly, and this should only consist of around 10-20 cuts. Remember that around 10-20% of the canopy is between 10 and 20 cuts in total. This idea is to remove some of the previous year’s growth but leave plenty of growth that…

A handful of tips to control the weeds in your garden before they become a problem Effective weed control is paramount and preventing weeds in the first place is actually much easier than trying to remove them. A few ways to help prevent weeds include using a mulch to block out sunlight, only watering the base of plants and not the whole flowerbed, spraying weeds when they are just seedlings instead of letting them establish,…

Hydrangeas are beautiful and rewarding shrubs to have in your garden. They are the quintessence of spring with their large blooms and overflowing growth. Knowing when and how to prune is important to keep these flowers blooming as much as possible. It’s also important to know that not all Hydrangeas should be pruned at the same time and pruning at the wrong time is could leave to your plant not flowering. It is actually one…

If you have a plum tree then a common question you might find yourself asking is ‘When should I prune?’ And the answer usually lies in knowing what your goals are for the tree. In general, newly planted plum trees that are 1-2 years old should be pruned to encourage them to bush out and form a well-branched tree, and established trees should be pruned to control the size, encourage higher yields and remove damaged…

If you happen to be a pizza enthusiast then getting an outdoor pizza oven is all the rage. Make pizzas in a small amount of time without needing to build a professional pizza oven. These miniature pizza ovens come fully equipped with everything you need to make pizza for your family or when you have a party. Finding the best outdoor pizza oven model is not that hard. In fact, you just need to understand…