Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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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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Brilliant border maintenance – what to do now for next summer’s success
Garden border maintenance in both autumn and spring is mainly about the plants. Summer and early autumn is for dead-heading. Weeding goes on all year round if you have a mild climate. Watering is for dry spells. But in both autumn and spring, it’s time to plant new plants, move plants that are in the wrong place and divide…
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7 lessons from Great Dixter, a garden that supports wildlife and looks gorgeous
Do you want to support wildlife in your garden – but you don’t want a ‘wild’ looking garden? You’d like beautiful borders and gorgeous pots? Even, perhaps, a short neat lawn? The gardening world is getting more polarised between the re-wilders and those who want their outdoor space to look like traditional gardens. But at Great Dixter, one…
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10 top autumn garden tips and plants
Here are key autumn garden tips plus 7 top suggestions of plants to plant now. You may be tempted to stop gardening in autumn, but if you do, you’ll be missing a trick. Because now is the best time to plant most perennials. So here is a selection of plants to plant now. They’ve been recommended by…
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How to make money from your garden – growing cut flowers
Sue Oriel has started a business growing cut flowers to sell from her garden. It’s called Country Lane Flowers, which she runs with her friend and neighbour Stephanie Bates. And although Sue’s garden is quite large – an acre – she only uses about a tenth of it for growing cut flowers, so people with much smaller gardens…
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Rustic cottage garden ideas – 7 tips for creating a stunning garden on a shoestring budget
Kathy and Stuart Pickering created their rustic cottage garden in a stretch of field. And you can use the same techniques to turn an empty lawn into a haven of colour and scent, filled with butterflies and birdsong. Their space is equivalent to a long, narrow town garden, measuring around 30ft x 100ft, but the ideas would…
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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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6 Common Reasons Why Your Garden Plants Aren’t Flowering (and how to fix it!)
Are you looking at plants in your garden and wondering why they aren’t flowering? I am. And I’ve discovered a surprising reason why my cosmos plants don’t even have any buds on them. So to get to the bottom of what stops garden plants from flowering, I asked local flower farmer, Sue Oriel of Country Lane Flowers,…
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How to turn a wide shallow backyard into the perfect garden
I’m always being asked for ideas for breaking up the space in a shallow wide garden, and also how to make it look longer. Many houses today are being built on small, individual plots. Gardens are getting smaller and they’re often shallow or odd wedge-shapes. Garden designer Posy Gentles transformed this shallow wide garden in Whitstable…
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Puppy-proof your garden – 7 practical tips that really work – and 3 to avoid!
If you’re going to puppy-proof your garden, there’s lots of advice out there. Not all of it works. As a journalist, I start every project with the assumption that I know nothing and must question everything. I talk to experts, read books and look up scientific research on the internet. And not everything I found about…
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