News - Page 118
Happy Garden Re-leaf Day! This year’s charity extravaganza takes place on 18 March and there’s loads for you to join in with all over the country – including plenty of special events here at our garden centre in Lymington.
Garden Re-Leaf involves the whole of the gardening industry and is now in its fifth year. In 2015 the event raised over £95,000 for the Greenfingers charity, which helps thousands of seriously ill children staying in hospices to enjoy spend...
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Flood-hit community gardeners could be up for a new award recognizing their resilience in rebuilding parks, gardens and green spaces in their areas after this winter’s devastating rainfall.
The RHS Britain in Bloom competition, involving up to 300,000 volunteers in the UK’s largest community gardening campaign, has announced a new discretionary award for overcoming adversity. The award will celebrate the courage of communities reviving green spaces after the...
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Caerhays Castle in Cornwall has been named Garden of the Year by the Historic Houses Association which described it as ‘impressive’ and ‘striking’.
The judges particularly praised the garden’s collection of Camellia x williamsii, which dates back to 1923 when it was bred at Caerhays. Caerhays is also one of only four gardens in Britain to hold a National Magnolia Collection, with 72 species of magnolia in full bloom in early summer.
‘A woodland garden...
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What to do in the garden in March:
The main question this month is where to start! Don’t worry - we’ve got it sorted with our list of the essential jobs to be getting on with over the next few weeks.
General tasks:
- Steep freshly-cut nettles in water for a few weeks and decant the rich brown liquid for a potent, nitrogen-rich plant food
- Start hoeing weekly to catch annual weeds the moment they appear so they never get big enoug...
Make this the year you get the kids into gardening - it’s a wonderful way to spend time with them as well as teaching them all sorts of things from the way the natural world works to where their food comes from.
All you need is a small area, say 1m x 1m, marked off with a low fence or coloured pebbles. A raised bed defines the area clearly - railway sleepers double up as comfy child-sized seats.
Let the kids choose what to grow: you can always br...
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An orchard of ancient cider apple trees has been saved for the nation after its owners gave it to the National Trust to look after.
The internationally important collection of 300 cider apple varieties includes evocatively-named apples like ‘Slack-ma-Girdle’, ‘Netherton Late Blower’ and ‘Billy Down Pippin’, put together over 25 years by collector Henry May at his Herefordshire orchard.
Material from each variety is being used to propagate new trees to...
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School children across Britain are getting the chance to grow seeds which have travelled in space after the Royal Horticultural Society joined forces with astronaut Tim Peake on the International Space Station for a gardening experiment.
The out-of-this-world rocket seeds are currently orbiting the Earth at 17,000 mph aboard the Space Station. They return to earth next month with NASA astronaut Scott Kelly before being divided up into packs o...
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The trees planted by Capability Brown are returning to the landscape, replanted by the National Trust to mark the three hundredth anniversary of the iconic landscape designer’s birth this year.
Brown was known for creating far-reaching vistas in the rolling landscapes he designed, and used carefully-placed copses of trees to frame views and provide focal points. Many have been lost over the years, but now under a new programme of tree-planting some of Brown’s...
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The sap is rising – and it's time for early bird gardeners to get out and doing. There are veg seeds to sow, pruning to finish and a good tidy-up before the season ahead. Let’s get started!
General tasks:
Spread slow-release fertiliser like pelleted poultry manure under hedges and around shrubs and trees
Top dress containers by scraping out the top couple of inches of compost and replacing with fresh
Orn...
Sow a box of salad now to ease those itchy gardener’s fingers and get growing something, and also provide yourself with a super-early crop to kick-start your grow-your-own year.
It's a bit soon to be sowing salad outdoors – but under cover in a greenhouse, polytunnel or just a bright windowsill lettuces and baby-leaf salad mixes germinate perfectly happily.
One of the most attractive ways to produce the quantities you need for a generous bo...