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1 week ago | 
hartley-botanic.co.uk | Lia Leendertz |Bob Flowerdew |Jean Vernon |John Walker
The greenhouse can do many wonderful things, particularly at this time of year, but one of the things it cannot do is make up for me having bought tomato plants too early. I know this lesson. I learned it many years ago, or at least I should have. Tomatoes grow fast, and as they do so they love light, warmth, water, food and space. They do not love frost, to put it mildly.
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2 weeks ago | 
hartley-botanic.co.uk | Bob Flowerdew |Jean Vernon |John Walker |Lia Leendertz
Brighten up your greenhouse with tubs of colourful Fountain Grasses in red, crimson or purple marked foliage. Good splashes of colour these are especially useful amongst taller plants camouflaging bare stems or disguising tubs. Fountain Grasses are remarkably easy to care for with minimal attention yet respond with luxuriant displays throughout the growing season. The original Fountain Grass is Pennisetum setaceum an invasive perfidious weed of scrubland throughout much of Africa and Asia.
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1 month ago | 
hartley-botanic.co.uk | Val Bourne |Bob Flowerdew |Jean Vernon |John Walker
When I was a young thing in my twenties, I spent some time in a lowly position in plant breeding and we worked on producing better cauliflower varieties. Each cauliflower in the field, and there were thousands of them to assess, was individually scored for depth of curd, colour and rice-like quality. The latter was not a good trait, by the way. I still find myself scoring a tray of cauliflowers in the supermarket now, some fifty years later, because it was so much a part of my life.
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1 month ago | 
hartley-botanic.co.uk | Jean Vernon |Bob Flowerdew |John Walker |Lia Leendertz
There are lots of positive things we can do to support our garden birds. High on the list is ensuring a rich supply of natural food, including insects. If you love the garden birds you need to love insects too because without insects our birds (and many other creatures would die). We need insects and invertebrates in our gardens to keep our soil healthy and help break down our garden waste.
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1 month ago | 
hartley-botanic.co.uk | Lia Leendertz |Bob Flowerdew |Jean Vernon |John Walker
One of the delights of this moment of the year in the greenhouse is my dwarf nectarine, in a pot on the sunniest side.
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1 month ago | 
hartley-botanic.co.uk | Bob Flowerdew |Jean Vernon |John Walker |Lia Leendertz
Our greenhouses are graced with many from the Malvaceae family: Abutilons, Okra, Sorrel and Hibiscus, all somewhat resembling our wild Mallows possessing mucilaginous sap and attractive flowers. Amongst these the tropical Hibiscus are famously large, flamboyant and popular as cut flowers so often seen in tropical hotels as slow to wilt in the heat. And this same useful attribute belongs to varieties of Hibiscus syriacus (as I mentioned in an earlier article, no 32).
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2 months ago | 
hartley-botanic.co.uk | Lia Leendertz |Bob Flowerdew |Jean Vernon |John Walker
From March onwards the greenhouse will start to fill up, but currently it is still and quiet and pretty empty in mine. There is time to make one last winter use of it, before the spring rush begins, and force some lily-of-the-valley pips. This is something I love to do every few years.
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2 months ago | 
hartley-botanic.co.uk | Jean Vernon |Bob Flowerdew |John Walker |Lia Leendertz
I have to be honest I usually find February a bit of a challenge. Of course, I know that spring is much closer, but February is still winter here in the UK and it’s still a bit early to be actively gardening. Even so, any sunny day provides a window to do a little outside and I’ve worked out a way to get through this short, but often murky month. I am changing my approach to February and I am embracing it as fantastic and fabulous.
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2 months ago | 
hartley-botanic.co.uk | Val Bourne |Bob Flowerdew |Jean Vernon |John Walker
I have a VERY soft spot for the daffodil because they brighten up March, a month that often promises spring but doesn’t always deliver sadly. Almost twenty years ago, after moving to Spring Cottage in December 2005, I was thrilled to see lots of daffodils popping up in the garden because it had appeared to be devoid of anything at all. They were a lovely surprise. Many would have been planted decades ago and they were not showy affairs.
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2 months ago | 
hartley-botanic.co.uk | Matthew Biggs |Bob Flowerdew |Jean Vernon |John Walker
The first two days of January have shown us just what a lottery the weather has become. New Year’s Day it was howling wind and torrential rain, today is the start of a cold ‘snap’. Both potent reminders of the joys of owning a Hartley Greenhouse, as you can start sowing from early January, whatever the weather.
