Innholdsfortegnelse for 24 May 2025 i Garden News

Now, I have to confess I don’t have any wisteria at home – we can’t all grow everything, after all! But there’s no doubt it’s a truly glorious plant and we know, from speaking to readers of Garden News, that it is enormously popular. Even people such as me, who don’t actually grow it, love the feeling it conveys as well as its look – it is the archetypal plant to trail over a cottage doorway. My colleague Ian Hodgson has an unmissable wisteria over his front door – which also makes it easy to find his house! So with all things wisteria in mind, in this issue Martyn Cox has some great growing advice (starting on page 12). Give it a go – the results will be worth it!…

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POTATO ‘SARPO MIRA’ Wild potato species come in a range of colours, including blue, red, almost black and purple, and people have been enjoying a rainbow of different potatoes for centuries. Red-skinned ‘Sarpo Mira’ is renowned for its resistance to late blight and has an RHS Award of Garden Merit. All potatoes are easy and bountiful, and you can just about still plant them now. They’re frost tender South American plants, so mid-April onwards is the ideal time to plant them. First and second earlies, harvested from July onwards, can cope being planted 30cm apart, but maincrops need more space. potatohouse.co.uk CARROT ‘PURPLE HAZE’ Purple carrots have been bred from purple-rooted, wild carrots found in the heartland of Europe where summers are hotter, so they do far better in a…

SPONSORED BY The online specialist gardening retailer, run by gardeners for gardeners A time of transformation Caroline & David Broome A plant-packed suburban garden in London that is accessible all year. What a difference a month makes! April was gorgeous. With very little rain, we were able to spend most of our free time outdoors. In the greenhouse, I’ve started planting up my hanging baskets and containers. All the perennial divisions have had to come out. I filled the tomato trough with peat-free multi-purpose compost but then used the compost for the containers! I’ve potted the tomatoes on from 9cm pots to 1L ones, ready for the trough in mid May. The summer house’s transformation from beach hut to studio is almost complete. David’s done a fantastic job of redecorating,…

Follow Naomi's progress as she gets to grips with her tiny urban garden on heavy bristol clay In gardening, as in life, all the organisation in the world won’t necessarily mean that a plan comes together as you hope it will. In your mind’s eye there’s the utopia of an orderly progression from snowdrops to daffodils and tulips, where you sow the veg and plant out the bedding, fill up pots then move seamlessly on to watching the roses come out and deadheading the sweet peas. Oh, it’s all so perfect and works so well, in theory! But of course, we can’t control everything, much as we wish we could. The weather can be wet, dry, cold or disruptive in some other new and different sort of way. Or life can…

Spring greens are the first fresh produce to harvest from the garden this year. I find growing veg challenging. The weather, pests and diseases all conspire to ruin my hard work! How wonderful it is, then, to have some easy wins with spring greens. I sowed the seeds last autumn and delicious, sweet and tender leaves were ready by early April. ‘Winter Jewel’ has great winter hardiness and produces huge, paddle-shape leaves, which can be steamed, added to stir fries and soups or served raw in salads and coleslaw. I grow mine in windowbox-type planters in a polytunnel. Plants are compact and don’t need much space to grow. Ingredients Serves 6 ● 2 tbsp olive oil● 1 medium onion, finely chopped● 2 medium carrots, diced● 2 sticks celery, sliced● 1…

Give your front door, conservatory, patio or balcony a Mediterranean feel with this breathtaking 90cm-tall oleander pink ‘Emilie’ Standard. Easy to grow, oleanders thrive on neglect, surviving hot, dry weather or temperatures as low as -5C – no wonder it’s one of the UK’s favourite exotics! We have a limited number of these mature, well-established plants available. Supplied as 90cm tall plant in 18cm pots. • Item 680156: 1 x 18cm pot £29.99 – save £10 • Item 680157: 2 x 18cm pot £49.98 – save £30 A 40L twin-pack of Professional Compost Containing the highest quality ingredients and pH balance for optimum growing conditions, you can get professional results – just like growers in the horticultural trade. Scientifically proven to encourage plants to reach their full potential, every time.…

Usually when we go to the garden centre our primary focus is to look for plants that will enhance our gardens. We might follow that up with a trip to the supermarket to buy tablets in case of a headache, or some peppermint tea bags to help with a touch of indigestion. But rewind 150 years and more and the garden and countryside would have supplied all your medicinal needs, because herbal remedies were the only things back then that our ancestors could rely on to cure common ailments. PLANTS TO EASE THE MIND AND BODY Another name associated with herbal remedies is officinalis, or officinale, indicating a medicinal use by herbalists. Valeriana officinalis, a fragrant early summer plant commonly known as garden heliotrope, has a divine perfume. It’s often…

Over winter, ponds build up a layer of debris such as fallen leaves and twigs and decaying pond plants. So grab a net and skim the pond’s surface to remove waste material before it sinks to the bottom. When organic waste decomposes, it produces nutrients that can harm the pond’s equilibrium, sending algae into overdrive. Silt and decaying material accumulate over time, so run a fine mesh net along the bottom to gently remove them. A lack of oxygen in the water will cause a build-up of other gases, some toxic to fish. Act now if your pond smells of rotten eggs! Some aquatic plants grow very quickly and can out-compete others, so thin invasive culprits to make space. Divide or cut back large clumps so submerged oxygenating pond plants…

With the prospect of warm, sunny weather and al fresco dining, now’s the time to sow summer salads. Of all the crops you can grow at home, salad leaves are the easiest and quickest and they can save you money as well as providing nutritious food. Although lettuce is the most obvious choice with a bewildering range of types, there are many others that provide a mouthwatering choice of flavours. These are probably the best to try if space is limited because just a few will add some ‘zing’ to shop-bought lettuce. Rocket is popular because of its spicy flavour and there are many different kinds. It’s easy to grow, and like most salad leaves can be ‘cropped’ several times. And like the others it’s best to sow little and…

Mention wisteria to beginner gardeners and they’re most likely to think of the classic climbing plant with long strings of perfumed, purplish-coloured flowers in late spring and early summer. In fact, wisterias are incredibly diverse, with flowers in many shapes, sizes and colours. A quick flick through the Royal Horticultural Society’s Plant Finder guide reveals there are just over 50 different wisterias readily available in the UK, producing single or double flowers in shades of white, pink and purple, along with some that bear two-tone blooms. Depending on variety, they’ll ascend heights of 3.5-12m and carry their small flowers in pendulous racemes that measure anywhere from 5-90cm in length. Some have racemes that are densely packed with flowers, while others are spaced more sparsely. Even their famed sweet, hyacinth-like fragrance…

The latest from Carol's beautiful cottage garden... plus her diary for the week! Did you start any veg over the past few weeks? This is the time of the year when most of us begin to think about growing edibles. My mum had very little space to grow vegetables but loved the idea of growing a few of the most popular and rewarding veg, and since she gave any surplus away, she concentrated on the most productive and the best tasting. On one patch of her little suburban garden outside Manchester was a small bed, which she used for this purpose. It was a versatile space, too, where she would not only stick in rose prunings and other cuttings – everything always seemed to take root – but also grow…

Now is the time to take some proper seasonal care of those classic, summer garden beauties – roses! New rose shoots, if they were pruned too early, may have been damaged by frost. This will not kill them but if the new shoots are badly damaged and withered, it may be worth pruning them back to remove these shoots. This will delay flowering but all will be well later in the season. The dry weather will also have meant that any potted roses need extra care with watering. We should never rely on rain to water plants in containers, but it’s easy to be complacent. The wet winter will have washed a lot of nutrients from the compost too, so roses in pots should get extra feeding, whether with a…

Helping you get your best-ever fruit and veg When I first moved to my current kitchen garden, one of the things I wanted to try was making my own plant feed without spending a penny. So, I planted a good amount of ‘Bocking 14’ comfrey in the flower borders and around the edge of the plot. It’s brilliant stuff for making liquid feed, and over time I’ve discovered that it’s not always necessary to make a smelly brew with water. You can actually create a virtually odourless feed without any added water at all. Even better, the leaves themselves can be used as a mulch. For the first comfrey harvest of the season, I cut the plants back to about 5-10cm above soil level, then I simply laid the leaves…

Professor Buczacki is a horticultural expert, writer and former chair of Gardeners' Question Time Got a problem? Our Problem Solver can help! See our contact details on page 3 #GNASKTHEEXPERTS Do I need to use whitefly control again? Karen Soper, Chester, Cheshire Stefan says: You’ve had problems for many years with whiteflies in your cool greenhouse and so last year tried using whitefly predators for the first time. It worked well, but you wonder if you’ll need to make a repeat purchase this spring. As it’s fairly expensive, you rather hope there will still be some left over in the greenhouse, and you ask in passing how something as tiny as a whitefly can cause so much damage. Whiteflies are sap-feeding pests, loosely related to aphids, suckers and leafhoppers. In…

Makeshift snail jail! Last year was a nightmare for my plants thanks to all the snails but I’ve since found a way to literally stop them in their snail trails! I invested in some cat deterrent mats so my cat wouldn’t toilet near my young plants, but I’ve discovered they serve a dual purpose. Just pop them where you need them and away you go. The snails get stuck in them as their shells wedge between the spikes. It’s made life much easier picking them off the mats rather than hunting them down each night. As you can see, my foxgloves are flourishing. Laura Clinton, by email Label legends! From large empty yoghurt cartons to extremely useful plant labels – how handy! Jean Kinchington, by email Best of this week’s…

Stunning new weigela ‘Camouflage’, which came third as Chelsea’s Plant of Year 2023, is the first to pair deep red flowers with variegated green-purple foliage. Generous clusters of trumpet-like, ruby-red flowers are set against foliage splashed bright green with purple-bronze margins. The effect is vibrant but harmonious, the flowers toning beautifully with the purple tints, while the lime splashes create contrasting highlights. Compact and densely branching, ‘Camouflage’ is a reliable and rewarding shrub for mixed borders and containers in sun or partial shade, providing a long season of foliage interest as well as colourful flowers. H&S: 60cm. Supplied as 9cm plants from May onwards. Weigela Towers of Flowers® Apple Blossom With its unusual columnar habit, weigela Towers of Flowers® ‘Apple Blossom’ does exactly as its name suggests. The pale pink…