Gardening

Blaze of glory: Building a bonfire is one of autumn's great joys

It's also a useful way to prepare the garden for winter

Inside Gardening

Trunk call: A red oak in Anna Pavord's garden is set to get a serious trim

Saturday, 20 November 2010

We inherited a red oak (Quercus rubra) when we moved into the garden I still think of as "new". For an oak it grows quite fast, and though it is nowhere near its potential height (25m), it's an important feature in the garden. The leaves are bigger than those of our native oak and in the right sort of autumn, they turn rich, tawny shades of brown, yellow and red.

Weekend Work: Time to attend to terracotta pots

Saturday, 20 November 2010

A warm front: The truth about your front garden

Sunday, 14 November 2010

The best way to get to know the people down your street is to get working on that patch just outside your door, says Emma Townshend

A sucker for succulents: See them through the frost, and you'll have Californian sunshine all year round

Sunday, 7 November 2010

My grandma sounded very pleased on the phone earlier; she'd just persuaded my uncle to come round and collect her plants. Not all of them. Just the precious collection of succulent plants that sit in pots on her balcony – they are off to spend the cold spell in his greenhouse. Succulents are desert plants that survive in the wild by filling their leaves with stored water – a reservoir that makes them prone to frost damage when the temperature goes down. Which it does, every so often, in the non-deserts of mid-Oxfordshire.

Totally tropical: What happens to an exotic garden in the UK when the cold weather arrives?

Saturday, 6 November 2010

i always think sub-tropical gardens are a bit like teenagers. While the classic English garden is, horticulturally speaking, up at 8.30am – in other words, brimming over with roses, peonies and delphiniums in May and June – the exotic garden is still pulling the duvet over its head. After a cold spring, it may still need prodding awake in mid-June.

Fringe benefits: The appeal of Sweet William

Sunday, 31 October 2010

No, I don't want pansies or primulas. All I want are some Sweet William seedlings, says Emma Townshend. And if I don't get them? I'll scream and scream...

All gardens great and small: How to make the most of your space, from a tiny terrace to a rural plot

Saturday, 30 October 2010

For decades in our two Dorset gardens, I have fought elder and bramble, bindweed and thistle and lived out three of the seven ages of gardening. While I have been moving through stages four, five and six, I've watched our children engage (or not) with the first three ages.