Container gardening is again going through a boom in popularity, not just for small gardens but for gardeners who want plants and vegetables closer to their back door. They provide an easy way to brighten up small spaces and create focal points in larger areas. We look at how to ensure your containers are a success. Pairing up pots and …

The distinctive feature of hollyhocks is their height, often up to three metres and their ‘jack-and-the-beanstalk’ stems are a delight to bees and butterflies as much as gardeners. When you think of an English cottage garden, you think of hollyhocks. Their tall, towering stems can line a path, stand either side of a gate or bring height and colour to …

Perhaps the most beautiful of all daffodil varieties and one of the last to appear in the garden these specialist bulbs have become hugely popular in recent years. What are poet’s daffodils? Also known as poeticus daffodils, poet’s narcissus, or sometimes pheasant’s eye daffodil, poet’s daffodils produce beautiful blooms with pure white petals.  The blooms appear later in the season …

Hippeastrum are popular gifts at Christmas. They are often commonly known as amaryllis and, by following a few easy tips, these beautiful flowers will bloom year after year for you. Hippeastrums are giants among indoor bulbs. Their sturdy, leafless stems, more than half a metre in height, are topped with blaring trumpets of rich colour or cooler hues. Easy to …

Bees love the easy access to these single flowered petal roses which offer a more natural option for the rose lover. More gardeners than ever before are succumbing to the delights of a single rose flower whose origins are in the natural simplicity of the wild rose. But that’s nothing to the passion shown for these roses by bees who …

Dorset retired teacher Joss Orton is now passionate about roses and here shares some of the things he has learnt on how to produce more flowers on his over 200 roses. When I retired four years ago gardening moved from being a worry to a pleasure. Before then I struggled to keep up with our acre and a half very …

Once you learn how to grow cosmos, a favourite annual for summer garden colour, and realise just quite how easy it is, you’ll be adding them all over your garden.  The pollen-rich flowers are a favourite of bees and other pollinators and are excellent for companion planting alongside vegetable and fruit crops in a kitchen garden, too, as they entice …

Fritillaria are uncommon and trendy additions to spring gardens, blooming in a dizzying array of unusual shapes, sizes, colours, and patterns that are truly out of this world. Many gardeners fall head over heels for fritillaria, exotic-looking plants which stand apart from the rest. It’s easy to understand their adoration.  In a spring garden full of daffodils, tulips, and other …

Trees give your garden structure, provide shade and make a wonderful resource for wildlife – every garden should have them in abundance. As spring appears on the horizon it’s worth remembering that no garden is too small for a tree, and there’s a wide and varied range of flowering trees suitable for small spaces. Year-round personality  Amelanchier lamarckii has flowers …

Floriography is the language of flowers. And perhaps no more relevant for flower arrangers or rose growers  than when they take part in the now popular trend of making sure the right colour means the right thing Roses are red, violets are blue. Let’s rewind that a little bit.  Roses come in all shades, and blue is just one of …