Gardening and Horticulture
Read out Gardening and Horticulture Blog
Roses are a group of popular shrubs, climbers, and groundcover plants. Because of their variation in growth forms they can be grown as groundcover, in borders, containers, or over arches. They are relatively easy to grow and offer a wide range of colours and scents in the garden. The word rosa comes from the Greek …
I have been studying for my Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) Level 2 certificate online with the Academy for Distance Learning for a few months now, and I’ve learnt so much! I can identify most of the flowers I see on my daily travels, I finally understand how photosynthesis works and I have a new favourite …
Walking within a walled garden, you may have been fortunate to have come across a small recess, or series of recesses, about 30cm high, with a small ledge, and maybe half a metre of so deep. If you are anything like me, you may have thought "thats an uncomfortable hiding place", or marvelled at the …
Fenugreek (Trigonella foenum-graecum) is a wonderfully versatile annual herb from the pea family (Fabaceae). It is native to Southern Europe, the Middle East and Western Asia. It was first mentioned in the Egyptian Medical Ebers Papyrus in 1500BCE as a medical herb and to embalm the dead. The fenugreek plant is quite hardy and reaches …
A while ago I wrote a blog about Hedges and Hedgelaying. Being from the UK, I can't think about hedges as boundary features without also thinking of their twin structures; dry stone walls. They are obviously made of very different materials and appearance, but I hope you will come to agree they share more in …
If you have been lucky recently, you may have been out walking on the moors or grasslands and seen a kind of crazy candy-floss looking plant which grows in mats on and throughout other vegetation, perhaps not dissimilar to an unruly spaghetti. Its the Dodder! Genetic testing of Dodder has recently confirmed botanist's early suspicions …
Lee Raye, our academic writing tutor has recently signed up as a learner on the Certificate in the Principles of Garden Planning, Establishment, Maintenance (formerly the RHS Level 2 Principles of Garden Planning, Establishment and Maintenance) here at the Academy for Distance Learning. Here is the first of a series of blog posts on their experience. …
Photo Credit: Amy Dadachanji April is the perfect time to see the lime green foliage of Alexanders (Smyrnium Olisatrum), also known as Black Lovage, or Horse Parsley. The whole plant is edible, from roots to seed. The plant was introduced to the UK by the Romans, who called it the ‘pot herb of Alexandria’ …
Whilst out walking by a grassy river bank in mid-March, I spotted some Butterbur in flower. I was quite unaccustomed to seeing it as a tiny flowering plant. For most of the year, it has large rhubarb- like leaves which are quite extensive, growing in obtrusive stands on the river bank. The flowers were almost …
The principles of having a wildlife garden are pretty clear; you need to maximise as far as possible opportunities for native wildlife in the context of a conventional garden design. But that doesn’t necessarily involve throwing open the doors of abandon and allowing any invasive species or ugly obtrusive shrub to take over. There is …
If your local supermarket closed down, where would you do your food shop? Most of us would say, 'The next supermarket closest to me!' What if supermarkets no longer supplied what you were looking for? What if you went to every supermarket and none of them had what you wanted? This has been the case …
Image from: Gardening Know How Online The Sensory Trust define a sensory garden as “a self-contained area that concentrates a wide range of sensory experiences. Such an area, if designed well, provides a valuable resource for a wide range of uses, from education to recreation.” (Sensory Trust, 2007) Sensory gardens appeal to all …
A herb spiral is a garden design element which allows us to grow a variety of medicinal and kitchen herbs in an economical and varied space. They are quite straight forward to build but a good herb spiral with a variety of species which keeps giving out every year takes a bit of forethought. Let’s …
