If you are looking to have a garden rife with bees, there are certain plants to consider growing. It’s important to remember that our local bees play a very important role in pollinating plants but they also need sustenance from the plants. While many flowering plants will bring bees about for intermittent pollination, if you really want to create a bee-friendly garden, try including some of our top ten plants that attract bees. 1. Digitalis…
Everyone loves the company of butterflies, with their many colours and their stunning wing patterns. To that end, if you want to encourage the arrival of more flying friends, you need to grow nectar-rich plants that help feed butterflies. Sadly butterflies are in decline and according to a report by the butterfly conservation, 75% of UK butterflies have shown a 10-year decrease so it has never been more important to plant with butterflies in mind.…
Growing fig trees in containers is a wonderful way to grow smaller varieties of fruit trees in your home, perhaps in an apartment or outside on a patio for those of you who don’t have large gardens. It’s also a great way to control the size of varieties that might otherwise grow too large. Growing in containers requires the same general care and maintenance as growing anything else. One of the benefits of growing in…
Fig trees are wonderful additions to any home and with so many varieties available on the market today you can grow your fig trees in containers outside or inside, you can grow them directly in the ground, you can get self-pollinating versions as well those that give you fruit using a single plant. Of course, in order to get the fruits and enjoy a successful fig tree, you need to know how to grow them…
Figs are part of the Ficus genus, a group of plants that have made a name for themselves throughout history. In fact, there is mention of figs and fig trees cultivated in the most famous gardens throughout history, particularly those across the Ottoman Empire, Europe and the Mediterranean. Fig trees can produce fruit as long as you give them adequate light and protection against severe cold, and if grown in a greenhouse they will often…
Fig trees are stunning and produce beautiful fruits, and some varieties, for example, ‘Brown Turkey’ can even be grown outside successfully. They have been popular in infamous Mediterranean gardens throughout history, mentioned in ancient biblical gardens, Roman gardens, even Ottoman gardens. But growing them outside in the UK successfully requires you to choose a particularly strong variety and plant it near a sunny wall to get the most out of it. Figs need protection against…
Rubber plants are wonderful plants to have in your home, office, practically any warm indoor space. It is from these plants that we derive the sap needed to create rubber, but rest assured you won’t have to contend with that if you are cultivating them in your home because that production does not begin until the plants have reached full maturity, which when grown has houseplants it hardly ever reaches. At the end of the…
Rubber plants can get quite large unless you prune them to effectively control their size. If you fail to properly prune rubber plants the branches will find it difficult to support the weight of additional branches and leaves. This usually results in the snapping of branches or an otherwise ugly and uncontrolled visual display. Pruning your rubber tree doesn’t have to be particularly complicated and in fact, as is the case with most plants, pruning…
Rubber trees are wonderful houseplants and if you already have a successful rubber plant or know someone who does, there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to collect two or three more. Propagating can seem intimidating at first, however, you shouldn’t shy away from it until you’ve tried it and it’s actually good fun. With rubber plants, there are two main ways that you can propagate. The first is by taking cuttings, similar to how…
