It’s not hard. Here is my recipe:

- Find a child who is bored, plenty of potential energy.

- Transfer to the allotment

- Fill one can with cold water from the standpipe tap

- Flourish several seed packets and offer to child, instructing to pick the one they prefer

- Stand well back as fingers get dirty making holes and poking seeds into soil

- Water well

- Write a label and poke into the soil, approximately where the seeds are located. retire for fizzy drinks and crisps in the shed or greenhouse.

Wait for about a week for shoots to appear, longer for food to grow and take care to gently weed around in the meantime. Congratulate yourself when they want to go back and do it again.

Even bigger congratulations if they’ll eat it once you pick it!

You have probably already noticed, but here are a few pointers for gerdening in the cold.

Don’t leave potted plants sitting in dishes of water, because the rootball is likely to be wet when the water in the dish freezes the cold will travel into the roots of the plant. This is not likely to do them any good. I usually put pots on their sides in wet and cold weather to help stop the roots getting too wet.

Planting, digging and sowing are usually discouraged if the groud is waterlogged or frozen. Not only will the work be difficult, it can also damage the structure of the soil and most plants and seeds won’t thrive in cold and wet ground. Wait until it warms up a bit first.

Feed your local birds. It’s tough beight small and hungry at this time of year, supplies of berries and insects are low and the cold weather means they need more calories to survive. Peanuts, bacon rind, crumbs of cake and seed mixes will all help them survive to eat the caterpillars off your roses next summer. Try to find a place to put out water too, I have to remove the ice from my bird bath daily but watching them splash about when I get back into the warmth makes the job worthwhile.

Perhaps you will be rewarded by a sighting of one of these little fellas, like I was today, for your efforts.

Anyone who grows fruit and veg in their garden or at an allotment will be able to remember their own crops turning up in unusual forms with regularity.

This weekend I dug up my first crop of parsnips, many of them were knobbly. Some, where I had obviously dropped a few seeds into the same area, had grown into a fantastic confusion of twisted roots. They came out ridged and sensuously curvy where they had grown around their neighbours.

The Times reports that the EU have finally decided to end the ban on selling strangly shaped fruit and veg in the supermarkets. (You can read it here) I think that this is a sensible idea and it’s a shame they have taken so long to put an end to the waste that this regulation must cause.

After all, there is nothing wrong with this food apart from the way it looks. It may be fiddly to prepare but it will taste the same as more photogenic specimens. I hope it will also mean that fruit and veg grown in this country will have an easier time making it into our supermarkets.

Of course, if you want to have a go at growing your own ‘interesting’ vegetables then try the tips for growing your own here. Believe it or not this is a good time to start planning a vegetable garden or allotment because you can set up beds, improve soil and order you seeds at this time of the year. Then you’ll be ready to start growing in spring 2009.

It’s that time again, as it gets colder (and darker) outside the gardener is forced to spend more time indoors and to fight off boredom the seed catalogues are delivered so we can dream about exciting plants next year.

A few links for you to order your seeds for 2009:

Thompson and Morgan

Seeds of Italy (Franchi Seeds)

Kings Seeds (particularly known for vegetable seeds but also sell flower seed)

Chiltern Seeds

Suttons

Unwins

During January there are many Potato Days that you can buy seed potatoes from that also have seed suppliers attending or where you can join in a ’seed swap’ to exchange your excess or unwanted seeds for something else. The nearest one to me is held in Whitchurch, more details here.

This morning on the BBC news there was a piece about how councils may be considering asking people to apply for planning permission before they pave over their front gardens to use for parking.

In town the cumulative effect of paving over thousands of front gardens is that heavy rainfall can run straight off paved areas and into drains that may overfill and add to flooding.

There are ways that a new parking space can be created without adding to water run-off if the space is created using new permeable types of paving, designed with gaps that allow water to reach the soil below, or gravel. In fact there have been quite a few gardens created at the shows this year and the last that tackle the problems of combining garden and parking space.

Even if you have a very small garden composed of no more than a few shrubs and some lawn, the chances are that it already provides a home to wildlife. Although we are most likely to notice larger creatures like birds and mammals it is the insects and small bugs that form the basis of their diet and encouraging these ‘mini-beasts’ into your garden will eventually result in larger creatures visiting.

A compost heap is always a good way to get really small insects into the garden as they help decompose the materials in the heap. If you have space for a heap top it up with green plant material mixed with woody prunings or even cardboard (torn up). The cardboard will help the green bits to decompose without getting slimy and is especially good if you want to compost your grass cuttings.

Flowering shrubs are good for providing nectar for insects and if you have space for several types to spread their flowers across the seasons you can ensure there is food for insects almost all year. Some of these insects (Hoverflies in particular) will predate on common garden pests like greenfly as well as attracting bird predators.

Hanging up a bird feeder could make all the difference to local birds such as sparrows and you will find larger birds like blackbirds will clear up the seed that falls to the ground as well as helping to keep slugs and snails under control. Put the bird feeder away from walls and places where cats could hide, if you can put it in a tree it will provide cover for shy birds to use the feeder.

If you would like your own wildlife-friendly garden call Create Garden Design to arrange a free consultation the numbers are at the top of the page.

I walk to the local shop past some hedges planted exclusively of Rosa rugosa and they are always humming with bees. From May and June these plants produce wonderful blooms in magenta or white that have delicate petals and golden stamens inside. The flowers smell lovely too but If you want to take a sniff you may find yourself in competition with the insects…they would certainly make a good addition to a wildlife garden.

They could make a good security hedge too due to their spiny stems that grow over a metre in height. The ones near me appear to be pruned using a hedge trimmer and they seem to grow back happily so I assume that they are not difficult to maintain.

Although they are deciduous and can look rather bare and spiky over winter they also have red fruits in autumn, providing one last bit of interest before they lose their leaves.

Walking around where I live today I was knocked sideways by the scent of this wonderful shrub, it has a kind of spicy orange fragrance that infuses the area all around it. It made me think that although a lot of plantings in urban areas can be a bit dull I am really lucky that the planting here seemed to have a some thought put into it. This is the first of a series of posts on this subject to give you some ideas for plants that perform well without much attention but are still rather wonderful.

I’m fairly certain that the majority of the Philadelphus planted nearby are Philadelphus coronarius with their white, 4-petalled, flowers containing a spray of yellow tipped anthers and glossy mid-green leaves. They flower from May into June and the plants grow to about two metres tall. They don’t get an awful lot of care and attention and when they are pruned it tends to be hard because the contractors make only yearly visits, yet they seem not to mind this harsh regime. The plants are deciduous and they tend to disappear in winter when they are reduced to a twiggy skeleton.

I would think the best places to grow one would be where you can appreciate the scent every day while it flowers. Next to a seat in the garden, grown by a window that is open during hot weather or by the driveway so that it can cheer you up on the way to, and home from, work.

Oh, and the local ladybird population seem to appreciate them too. Ladybird larvae don’t bear any resemblance to the final beetle stage of their lifecycle but they are good predators of greenfly.

One man’s mission to grow lovely plants where before there were only weeds and, quite often, rubbish. I have been reading this blog on and off for the last year about Richard who lives in London and has been planning and executing mostly night-time raids with his fellow guerrilla gardeners to improve the urban landscape. Their activities include planting in unattractive and unloved places, often roundabouts, old concrete street planters and little bits of waste ground to make the area just a bit nicer.

Go and visit the blog here, if you feel inspired you can join a local guerrilla gardener group to improve the area where you live!

For the last eight years I have had a rather dull front garden full of shrubs left by the developer and their landscapers who planted all the (rather small) front gardens on the street where I live. This year I decided to start fresh and even better, my neighbours decided to let me loose on the part of their front garden that adjoins mine.

The garden faces west and so it receives sunshine all afternoon and in the summer evenings, the soil is fairly heavy but has now had masses of compost added. I had been admiring the grasses planted at RHS Wisley (near the cafe) and in the end decided to grow them along with some box bushes and Epimediums for winter interest and some geraniums and Echinacea for summer flowers. I also had a lovely fragrant English rose to include in the mix.

Planting design can be difficult because there are just so many variables and I drew the garden about half a dozen times and made several plant lists in order to narrow down the plant choices and their positions. I also had a walk around everyone else’s front gardens to see what they had planted, how it was doing and if it looked nice.

I’m pleased with the result, even though it has to grow and fill out the space. I was tempted to plant everything a bit closer but in the end I don’t have the time (or space) to dig out the extra plants when it becomes established and rehome them. Perhaps I will return to this subject at the end of the summer and post some more photos to show how the garden is changing.

If you’d like some ideas for your front garden with plants or design get in contact or leave a message on this blog.