Hartley BeanFeast March 2014 It’s no secret that I’m addicted to bees. I just can’t help talking about nature’s little heroes, or more accurately heroines, at every opportunity. Last week I met a small boy who started asking me very grown-up questions about bees and it made me realise how much bees are taken for […]

Any greenhouse, conservatory or sunny windowsill will be graced by the tropical beauty and perfection of a pot of Jacobean lilies. The flowers are relatively huge reaching saucer or side-plate size and a foot or so high, in richest crimson lightly marked with gold, these first appear in early summer then again through summer. Sprekelia […]

I want to say: ‘It’s February, and it feels like spring is coming!’ but that would be a big, fat lie. Perhaps because we haven’t really had a proper chill all winter, perhaps because the weather is so relentlessly grey and dull, but I can’t quite get past that sense that winter might still come […]

If we made more of our gardens’ huge potential as the first line in flood defence, fewer of us might need to resort to sandbags next time round. With thousands of homes flooded and their gardens submerged, there’s a hollow, ringing futility to recent gardening advice along the lines of ‘use a board to get […]

Hartley Bean Feast Feb 2014 I’m working on a pea feast for early spring. Well peas and broad beans, the hardy stalwarts for GYO enthusiasts and actually a delicious choice that is so easy to grow it should be compulsory. Despite the fiddly depodding process, the taste of freshly picked peas completely makes up for […]

January has been the wettest on record, February can be the coldest (hopefully not!) but at least it is the shortest and heralds the spring. Once the first snowdrops appear, I feel that the growing season has begun! Snowdrops are often lifted after flowering and sold ‘in the green’, if you bought some, replant them […]

A Parrot plant will be the most fascinating display in your greenhouse or conservatory. It will, if grown well be most impressive and flamboyant. Even grown badly it will still be curious and interesting. For this is one of those quirks of nature. Each waxy almost plastic bloom is gorgeous with a firm body of […]

Your greenhouse can become a powerhouse for winter crops – and that’s with the lights out and the heating off. The lights flickered, hesitated, flickered some more, and then finally went out here over Christmas. Our ‘big’ power cut lasted the best part of a single daytime’s feebly lit hours. Compared to others, we got […]

My under-cover empire is expanding. At the end of the garden I have the rickety greenhouse bought from a neighbour for £100. On my deck just outside the back door I have my beautiful and not even vaguely rickety Hartley Botanic mini greenhouse. And soon, within the next few weeks (energy and enthusiasm willing) I […]

January might seem a funny time to be writing about ladybirds, but the gardeners’ best friends are very much alive and well in a garden and greenhouse near you, right now. On the odd sunny day that entices you out into the garden, you won’t be far from a ladybug, a small red beetle with […]

Any cool greenhouse or conservatory will be enhanced with a pot or two of Sarracenia Pitcher plants. Exotic and strange looking, the fantastically wrought tubular vases of their leaves out perform most flowers with striations, netting and mottling in purples, reds, greens and yellows. Added to their striking coloration these lidded pitchers appear almost alien […]