©geograph.org.uk Peat bogs cover just 3% of the earth’s surface but store 30% of the world’s carbon. They are the world’s largest carbon sink, storing more than all other types of vegetation combined The peat forming process is very slow – it can take a hundred years to form one metre of peat Draining, harvesting or burning peat releases hundreds of years of stored carbon into the atmosphere accounting for 5% of global greenhouse gas emissions “Every time you use a peat-based compost in the garden, you are deliberately participating in the destruction of a non-renewable environment that sus ..read more

It’s true to say that most gardens in the UK are long and thin. These lend themselves well to traditional greenhouses that have a door in the gable. Longer gardens can accommodate longer greenhouses. But if you are lucky enough to have a wide garden the options are greater. You could for example opt for a greenhouse with a porch which allows access to the structure from the side. Such greenhouses are generally ornate in nature, commonly Victorian, and occupy a position in the garden of focal interest. As you might expect such greenhouses are more expensive than the more traditional type but ex ..read more

So you’ve finally got some outdoor space and you want to start a garden Here’s 10 tips to help get you off to the right start. Buy yourself a spade. You don’t need to spend much in fact you can pick these up cheap at car boot sales. Weeding, digging holes for new plants, shifting compost, levelling ground, turning over soil – a spade does the lot. Get to know your soil. Before you go out and spend a your money on plants get to know a bit about your soil. At the very least see what plants seem to be doing well in neighbouring gardens. The more scientific amongst you might want to invest in a ..read more

It’s no secret that gardening requires effort and time but if you have have a busy schedule or a propensity perhaps to sit and relax then here’s five low maintenance garden plants you should include in your garden. Most of these plants will give you good ground cover which will help keep any weeds at bay and save you time weeding. Hebe rakaiensis – available in a broad range of colours and sizes so you should be able to find a variety that you will like. This small evergreen shrub is relatively slow growing and puts on a display of small delicate white flowers in the summer. It forms th ..read more

I’ve just been to the annual Garden Press Event, where we get to see what’s new in the world of gardening and I found plenty to catch my eye. Nutscene’s Thick Chunky Twine Ball (£10.95 from www.nutscene.com) is a heavy duty twine that will be invaluable in the garden for those jobs that need something more robust than ordinary garden string. Forest Garden’s Victorian Walkaround Greenhouse is a great idea for anyone with limited space – the gardener stays outside and opens the doors to get access to the plants inside. Maybe not ideal for the gardener when it rains, but a good place to keep tend ..read more

It’s decades since I last visited the Huntingdon Gardens and my memory of them was quite hazy, other than admiring the Japanese bridge and seeing hippeastrums growing outdoors, so it was top on my list of places to go when we had a two-night stopover in Los Angeles en route to Tasmania. It has clearly been spraunced up a fair bit since my last visit and parts of it are quite breathtaking – in particular the Desert Garden – it is astonishing. I’m not sure how I missed seeing it on my first visit as it covers ten acres and is nearly 100 years old and filled with a magnificent array of very la ..read more

Posting my ‘Top Nine of 2018’ in Instagram, it was interesting to see that the most ‘liked’ images were all local – some from my own garden, but also from Perch Hill, Sarah Raven’s always inspiring garden at nearby Brightling and the equally inspiring Great Dixter. The only non-plant post was of the approaching Beast from the East. As we walked along the beach the sky was the most extraordinary colour and it was pulsing like a malign aurora borealis. Fingers crossed we don’t see anything similar in 2019. Follow theenduringgardener on Instagram. Key to photographs: Top row: Beast from the East ..read more

Mahonias don’t get a particularly good press, mainly because they are too often left to grow straggly – which is not a good look. Bare stems, sparse leaves and a top knot of flowers doesn’t show this plant off to its best advantage, however sweet the perfume of its winter flowers. Later in the year its dusky blue berries also deserve a better setting.  My recent visit to the new Winter Garden at Wakehurst Place was as interesting for the plants that were retained as for those that were newly planted.  The mahonias were especially impressive – after a very hard prune they had regrown ..read more

An unexpected delivery of a microgreens growing kit from a company called Silly Greens reminded me just how packed with flavour newly sprouted seeds are and how convenient it is to have something growing on your windowsill that will add an extra flavour hit to soups, salads and sandwiches. They are packed with nutrients too, which is definitely a benefit in the season of coughs and colds. The idea behind Silly Greens is that you sign up for regular deliveries, so that you always have something growing on your windowsill. This is ideal for flat dwellers and students and those too busy to organ ..read more

Over the years I have come to realise that the key to overwintering half-hardy and tender plants is not necessarily to cosset them somewhere warm, but to make sure that they stay fairly dry. Cold doesn’t necessarily kill them, unless your soil is frozen for long periods of time, but the combination of cold and wet almost always does. I have a variety of strategies, depending how precious particular plants are – some I will gamble with, some not. The citrus trees are far too precious to risk losing them and although they are now too large to find space for all three indoors, two come through t ..read more