Making friends with ferns | James Wong

An evergreen solution to dark problems

I am a terrible horticultural voyeur, forever peering over fences as I wander round my patch of central London. I find it fascinating what people can achieve in such small spaces, what plants they can get away with and the atmosphere they can create against all adversity.

However, there is one horticultural conundrum that even the most successful urban gardeners often find hard to crack: what to grow as ground cover in small, dark, urban spaces. You see an awful lot of white pebbles stained black by the city air, sun-loving summer bedding sulking in deep shade and (my nemesis) threadbare patches of artificial turf. But a group of plants will thrive in these dark, dingy conditions and provide perpetual clothing of green, even in the darkest depths of winter: evergreen ferns.

Continue reading...

from Home And Garden | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2ZRyQ5g
via IFTTT

Save seed, plan and share – it’s as good as growing | Allan Jenkins

The best small companies, the legume holy grail and how keep them dry – top tips from a seed hoarder

I am a spender not a saver. I was never much good with money. I enjoy the ability to be able to buy things. With seeds I am a hoarder. Except for the guilt that comes now, sputtering to the end of the growing season, when I have somehow failed to sow in time, to let my seed live a fuller life. To express itself, to grow, become an adult plant, a root crop, a flower. Though I guess there is always next year.

I trawl seed businesses like other addicts collect drug dealers. I favour small companies – the specialist suppliers, the monomaniacs where my money can make a difference: Roger Parsons for sweet peas, Ben Ranyard at Higgledy Garden for (mostly) annual flowers, Mads McKeever at Brown Envelope Seeds for open-pollenated organic vegetables, Jekka McVicar for herbs, Franchi for (mostly) Italian vegetables, Adaptive Seeds for kales, and many, many others.

Continue reading...

from Home And Garden | The Guardian https://ift.tt/313JPpT
via IFTTT

Joining the dots: the tiny Rye cottage with spot-on paintwork

Hand-painted fabrics and bold furnishings give this colourful home a cheerful appeal

‘In the darkness, you move towards the light,” says Catherine Reynolds. We’re eating pastries in her front room and talking about how she came to paint imperfect stripes and dots on vintage furniture and fabric. “When things shine brighter you instinctively move towards them,” she continues. “And because you’re in such a dark place, you don’t really think about what the light is. You just go towards it. That’s how I ended up in Rye and that’s how Polka started: it was a light and I just loved doing it.”

A couple of years ago, Reynolds was not in a good place. Recently divorced, she wound down her successful PR company and moved from a large London flat to a tiny, historic cottage in Rye. She is originally from Merseyside and her accent remains strong. Her friend, Marcus Crane – co-founder of the local art and interior store, McCully & Crane – found her this cottage.

Continue reading...

from Property | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2UNYSBP
via IFTTT

Joining the dots: the tiny Rye cottage with spot-on paintwork

Hand-painted fabrics and bold furnishings give this colourful home a cheerful appeal

‘In the darkness, you move towards the light,” says Catherine Reynolds. We’re eating pastries in her front room and talking about how she came to paint imperfect stripes and dots on vintage furniture and fabric. “When things shine brighter you instinctively move towards them,” she continues. “And because you’re in such a dark place, you don’t really think about what the light is. You just go towards it. That’s how I ended up in Rye and that’s how Polka started: it was a light and I just loved doing it.”

A couple of years ago, Reynolds was not in a good place. Recently divorced, she wound down her successful PR company and moved from a large London flat to a tiny, historic cottage in Rye. She is originally from Merseyside and her accent remains strong. Her friend, Marcus Crane – co-founder of the local art and interior store, McCully & Crane – found her this cottage.

Continue reading...

from Home And Garden | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2UNYSBP
via IFTTT

Gardens: Shropshire’s late bloomer

Wildegoose is a walled nursery, mixing formal and wild planting that’s still bursting with life at the end of summer

Wildegoose Nursery would like you to get lost. Behind its beautiful brick walls, its creators would like you to immerse yourself in the sound of insects, to wander along paths as perennials tower above you, and glimpse, over hedges, other corners that burnish with late-summer colours, or tumble with vegetables. Then there’s a slice of cake and a cup of tea at a table tucked among the flowers.

Laura and Jack Willgoss represent a new breed of growers who are turning their nurseries into destinations, with plot-to‑plate cafes, courses and workshops, inspirational test gardens and a selection of plants to go home with. Twenty minutes outside Ludlow, the nursery is hidden within a beautiful walled garden on the Millichope Park estate. When the couple first arrived, the walled garden hadn’t been in productive use since the 1960s. It was home to the huge Bouts viola collection – hardy and scented violas, many varieties spanning back to Victorian times – which they inherited when they bought the nursery. A 19th-century, curvilinear glasshouse was just a metal framework with trees growing through it; and as for the rest of the garden, there was none of the original layout left, just two acres of wilderness. Laura and Jack, who met as horticultural students at RHS Wisley, had long held a dream of restoring a walled garden, and here it was: a blank canvas.

Continue reading...

from Property | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2ZVN3Kq
via IFTTT

How to grow winter radish, turnip and spinach | Alys Fowler

September is a kind month; the soils are warm and moist, and there are enough good days ahead to ensure quick growth

There are always some summer losses that niggle – crops that never got going, or did but instantly got mown down by marauding somebodies. You can’t make up for lost carrots and the time for tomatillos is over, but you can get a few crops in now for last-minute wins.

September is a kind month; the soils are warm and moist and there are enough good days ahead to ensure quick growth for those that are willing to race at life. So, if you’ve spent all summer hunkering after a good radish and instead got something that bolted or went pithy in the middle, try again this week. September often produces a truly fine crop. Choose somewhere sunny, and if you use a pot, make it a big one – radishes hate being overcrowded. Cover thinly with just a little soil, then water. You should have a crop in four weeks. ‘French Breakfast 3’ and the super-fast ‘Sparkler’ are both ideal.

Continue reading...

from Property | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2ZEiXPR
via IFTTT

Gardening tips: plant bee magnet Macedonian scabious

Then pay a visit to Pensthorpe natural park in Norfolk, and divide fading heucheras

Plant this If you are looking for a long-flowering bee magnet, Macedonian scabious (Knautia macedonica) is a canny choice. Flowers the colour of summer pudding on wiry stems come thick and fast into autumn, provided it’s given full sun and well-drained soil. Height and spread: 75cm x 45cm.

Visit this Pensthorpe natural park in Norfolk is home to one of acclaimed plantsman Piet Oudolf’s first designs in the UK, the Millennium Garden, which should be at its peak this month. Visit 8 September and peruse plants for sale from a range of nurseries at its specialist plant day.

Continue reading...

from Property | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2ZW6qmO
via IFTTT