Innholdsfortegnelse for 27 December 2025 i Garden News

The first thing I need to do here is wish all readers of Garden News a very happy Christmas. Now some of you – notably our subscribers – will receive your magazine before the big day, while others may pick it up in the shops afterwards. Either way, I very much hope you have/had a wonderful time! That lull between Christmas and New Year always feels like prime gardening time to me – if nothing else it’s a great excuse to get outside after being cooped up for days. Blow away the cobwebs with some fresh air, and it’s surprising how much we can get done in just an hour or two. Top of my list is sorting the shed. Every year at this time I organise it beautifully, everything…

New plants appear in garden centres and mail order nurseries all the time – we bring you news of some of the most tempting on our weekly news pages. But when they first appear, some of the best new varieties need tracking down. Fortunately, the RHS Plant Finder is there to reveal all. The RHS Plant Finder is basically a fat, 800-page paperback book that lists more than 64,000 different plants with notes on the nurseries that offer every one. All the newcomers are flagged and this year there are in excess of 1,200 new additions, so just about every variety that’s new on the market is listed along with supplier details. There are also full details of more than 360 nurseries whose plants are included, and the whole thing…

Prepping for the winter Christine High A Norfolk garden, with shady borders, wildlife areas and a large herbaceous bed. Autumn was quieter than usual for us this year. Normally, we’d be busy with the lawn care, but the exceptionally dry weather left the turf too vulnerable for raking – it would have only done harm! So instead, we focused on tidying and preparing the garden for winter. Garden seating and ornaments were cleaned and stashed in the summerhouse. Most hedges had their last trim, and Pete tidied up the ivy on one of our large conifer stumps. He cut back the straggly growth, thoughtfully leaving as many ivy flowers as possible for the benefit of the insects, and it buzzed with bees as he worked. I was allowed up the…

TV and radio broadcaster Martin is an RHS judge and former head gardener With short winter days and cold weather, we don’t always get out into the garden as much as we’d like to, but when the weather’s dry and fine, I do enjoy pottering outside. Although the winter garden will never be as lush or colourful as midsummer, there are plenty of plants that look great through the cold season, with many starting to put on a show from now. The garden should be enjoyed all year round and to do that you need to grow a selection of winter beauties. Of course, many also look great in summer, but it’s now that they pull out all the stops. They also play their part in helping our garden wildlife.…

I don’t grow everything I need, but it does make me happy to have my own veg for Christmas. I’m using carrots I’ve grown in containers to make a delicious festive ring. I’ve not had to queue up at the shops for these, I’ve just stepped outside my back door. You can’t get much fresher than that! Whole nuts provide the best flavour, but you can use ready-chopped nuts. Serve with gravy and all the usual festive roast vegetables, Yorkshire pudding and greens – yummy! Happy Christmas to you all. Ingredients Serves 6 1 red onion  1 white onion  1 stick celery 225g carrots  1 red pepper  225g whole mixed nuts: walnuts, almonds, hazel, cashew 1 slice wholemeal bread, made into breadcrumbs  Tiny pinch of dried chilli flakes  1 tsp mixed dried herbs or 1 tbsp fresh…

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 Why has my pyracantha done well? Frances Wiltshire, Northamptonshire Stefan says: I’m generally asked to explain why something has gone wrong and what can be done to alleviate it. By contrast, you’re asking why your pyracantha has been so good this year. And, most significantly, you go on to ask if the abundance of berries means we’re in for a truly hard winter, as everyone keeps telling you. I do agree wholeheartedly about the abundance of berries. I’ve never seen pyracanthas so laden with fruit, and this is true wherever I’ve been in the country. It isn’t just a local…

White Mushroom Grow Kit Grow your own crops of delicious, fresh white button mushrooms at home with this easy-to-use Grow Kit. Perfect for kitchens and indoors, you’ll enjoy a regular supply of the most popular and versatile mushrooms that are great for pizzas, garlic mushrooms, or adding to any dish. Packed full of goodness, you’ll be harvesting tasty mushrooms in just a few weeks, with several crops to come. A fascinating and rewarding project – and a great gift for any foodie or gardener. • Item 161138: 1 x 3L kit £9.99 - save £2 • Item 161139: 1 x 7.5L kit £14.99 Brown Mushroom Grow Kit Enjoy growing delicious, flavour-packed brown mushrooms indoors and harvest multiple crops with this easy, space-saving kit. Brown mushrooms offer a rich, savoury taste…

Spread some seasonal cheer by planting a colourful pot of flowers, berries and foliage. You can move it around as you like or make a gift of it. Select plants that are slow-growing with contrasting textures. Broad-leaved cyclamen or hart’s tongue fern look good against the tall, narrow spikes of Festuca glauca, the nodding heads of Chinese lanterns or berry-laden Solanum pseudocapsicum (Christmas cherry) – just remember the berries are mildly poisonous so keep out of reach of children and pets. Early flowering Helleborus niger ‘Advent Star’ and ‘Christmas Carol’ have festive white blooms, flowering from December to February, and at a petite 25-30cm, they’re perfect for pots. Group plants together that favour similar growing conditions; pot up acid-loving plants like heather, azaleas and Pieris japonica in ericaceous compost. Sarcococca…

Although raspberries and blackberries are seen as very different fruits, they’re remarkably similar when it comes to pruning. Both produce stems that don’t bear fruit in their first year. In the second year, these stems develop sideshoots that flower and fruit. After fruiting, these stems usually die back or become unruly, so it’s best to cut them down to ground level. Meanwhile, as those stems are producing fruit, new shoots grow from the base to provide next year’s crop. Ideally, no stem on the plant is older than 18 months. For raspberries, young canes are tied vertically to supports, and if they grow taller than 1.5m, the tips are trimmed. Blackberries are more vigorous; their new shoots are trained horizontally along wires or trellis, encouraging fruit and flowers to develop…

WHAT GROWS TOGETHER £22 Jamie Butterworth ● Showcasing more than 60 effective planting combinations for different sites and situations and times of year, the author provides practical and inspirational ways to achieve a flourishing, well-planted garden. All combinations are suitable for containers as well as borders, supporting gardeners of all kinds. DK DIARY OF A KEEN GARDENER £20 Mary Keen ● Using a diary-led approach, garden writer, author and designer Mary Keen reveals a multitude of life experiences and horticultural insights gleaned from developing and tending her much-loved back garden and nearby allotment, alongside family and friends who are an integral part of her gardening community. John Murray Press GARDENS OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND £25 ● For a tour or an armchair experience, this lavishly illustrated work profiles 100…

The latest from Carol's beautiful cottage garden... plus her diary for the week! The holly and the ivy have been synonymous with this time of year for millennia, long before the coming of Christ. Holly was venerated in pagan times as a symbol of life continuing and triumphing over the cold, bare winter. Myth had it that the Holly King ruled the winter, taking over (and giving way to) the Oak King, who ruled the lighter part of the year, the time when plants grew. There are various theories as to exactly when one king replaced the other, but the story symbolises the cycle of nature. Hollies have so much going for them. Some have steely grey trunks, others have purple stems. Some are laden with berries in vivid red…

Dispel the winter blues by igniting your plot with a burst of colour. Plant low-maintenance, winter-flowering shrubs to keep your garden buzzing from November to March with foliage, berries and highly scented blooms. Viburnum bodnantense ‘Dawn’ and ‘Charles Lamont’ boast dense clusters of rose-pink and white flowers on bare stems, or try evergreen V. tinus ‘Eve Price’. For a more compact shrub, grow V. farreri ‘December Dwarf’. Deciduous Hamamelis intermedia (witch hazel) enchants with fragrant spidery blooms of yellow or copper tones. Chimonanthus praecox (wintersweet), winter-flowering jasmine and honeysuckle also offer intense fragrance. The scented spires (racemes) of acid-yellow mahonia erupt above spiky-toothed evergreen foliage; enjoy Mahonia media ‘Charity’, ‘Winter Sun’, shade-loving M. aquifolium and M. japonica or glossy Sarcococca confusa (sweet box). Select shrubs to suit your garden’s conditions.…

Helping you get your best-ever fruit and veg With attention so often fixed on the big day itself, I find it’s easy to forget there’s still time to head out into the garden and quietly gather everything I need for a proper homegrown Christmas dinner from the beds that have worked so hard all year. Brussels sprouts are always first on my list and, whether you love or loathe them, they feel inseparable from the Christmas table, so rather than yanking up whole plants or buying those towering supermarket stalks with huge buttons at the base and tiny ones at the top, I prefer to harvest them individually. I twist off the tight, firm buttons from the bottom of each stem, choosing sprouts that are all roughly the same size…

Wreath relief! This is the first wreath I’ve ever made, and it was surprisingly easy! Inspired by the colourful leaves on the ground, I gathered a mix of leaves, some conkers and a few berries. I poked them into an old straw ring left from Christmas and added a wire loop for hanging. I’m amazed how beautiful it turned out – and it didn’t cost a thing! Leanne Wigley, Lincolnshire Colour coding Do you struggle to remember the colours of your dahlias after you’ve dug them up for winter storage? Try attaching a written label to one of the stems with a soft tie before wrapping them (eco-friendly, of course!) in recycled copies of Garden News. Lynsey Spendlove, by email Purple persuasion I was out with my mum and dad…