Category: Wildlife & eco
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Eco-friendly garden design – what you need to know before you spend money
Eco-friendly garden design can save you money on landscaping. It can also make your garden look more individual, reflecting your personal style. And if you want to be more sustainable or encourage wildlife and biodiversity, then the design of your garden is an essential starting point. So I visited the Walworth Garden to find out more…
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How to grow wildflowers – add colour to your garden all summer long!
You can grow wildflowers in a border, a pot and a window box as well as in a meadow. A good wildflower seed mix can keep colour going with changing flowers for months at a time. And the cost of a few packets of seeds makes this a cheap way of filling a border. It’s easy but…
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Discover the magic of a rewilded garden
When the rewilded garden by Urquhart & Hunt won ‘Best in Show’ at RHS Chelsea in 2002, it triggered a debate about whether rewilding could be called gardening at all. Traditional gardeners thought it looked messy and unkempt. If you just let your garden ‘go’, it will be full of weeds. Surely that can lead to invasive…
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A small wildlife garden for towns and cities – and it’s really easy to maintain
This small wildlife garden is very pretty and easy to look after. Plus it attracts a wide range of wildlife. Is a small wildlife garden realistic, especially in a town? Would it be easy to maintain? And how managed does a garden have to be? And she also never buys plants, because she allows plants to colonise…
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5 easy wildlife garden tips – they’ll really make a difference
Easy wildlife garden tips are the things you can do to make your garden more wildlife friendly without having to change anything major. And they will really help the wildlife in your garden. Why rewilding your garden is good… The reason why it’s important to have a wildlife friendly, more natural garden is that insects are…
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3 very simple things you can do to create an eco friendly garden
An eco friendly garden can also save you time and money. So it’s not always just about the principles of sustainability. I recently spoke to Sally Nex, author of the RHS How to Garden The Low Carbon Way. She says that the first thing we should do is to be more ‘hands off’. ‘We’ve been conditioned – since…
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Wildlife friendly garden tips
A wildlife friendly garden is an important part of sustainable living today. Urban gardens have a real part to play. I’ve been talking to Fern Alder, an award winning garden designer who has designed gardens at the top flower shows such as The RHS Chelsea Flower Show and Hampton Court Garden Festival. A wildlife garden impacts on…
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5 homemade fertilisers that will make your garden grow
Here are five effective – but easy – homemade fertilisers for your garden from the organic Abbey Physic Community Garden in Faversham. The Abbey Physic Community Garden provides therapy and skills training in horticulture for people with isolated by mental or physical health issues, social or economic disadvantage as well as for the community in general. There is art and…
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Why you need a butterfly garden – and how to plant it
Have you considered planting your borders as a ‘butterfly garden?’ We all know it’s important to support bees, because the decline in pollinating insects is potentially such a threat to our food supply. But butterflies are an important sign of a healthy eco-system. And they, too, are pollinators. According to Jane Moore, author of Planting For…
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How to create a beautiful mini meadow garden
Do you fancy a mini meadow garden? People are increasingly interested in allowing part of their lawn to grow wild, because it looks beautiful and can help wildlife. there’s increasing interest in natural-looking meadow lawns. Unlike the London Olympics, a middle-sized garden doesn’t have half a mile to fill with meadow flowers and native grasses. So…