Horticultural

Fierce plants for bottle gardens

I’ve always been a bit of a bottle garden nut. As a kid I got a huge aquarium from god know’s where (perhaps my sister can remember?) and set it up in my room as a terrarium, with plants bought with my pocket money from Woolies. It even had a grow light in the top, which my dad set up for me.

Bottle gardens (or terrariums) have been rather out of fashion since then, but I was inspired by posts on Garden Rant and the Blithewold Gardens blog to give them a second look. I made up a couple for today’s gardening feature in Weekend, which looks at three different fun things to use as pots. The terrarium that ended up being pictured (although you'll have to look in the actual magazine to see it) was a rather nice jar from Heals filled with some baby Chlorophytum ‘Ocean’ plants.

I was pleased at how it turned out, but I think I prefer the other bottle garden I made (pictured left), containing a sarracenia and a venus fly trap.

Carnivorous plants have a bit of a reputation for dying once you get them home, but bottle gardens help because it's easy to check they have enough water (they prefer to be more or less waterlogged in summer, less so in winter, so keep the gravel covered in rainwater - never use tap). The closed environment keeps out the draughts that can kill these plants, but if you want them to catch some meals you'll have to take it off from time to time, or else feed them occasionally with a very dilute foliar houseplant feed. The jar I used here was £30 from Lytton & Lily but if you like hunting things down in junk shops and charity stores you can track something down for a lot less. A good book to start with if you want to get into carnivorous plants is The Savage Garden by Peter D'Amato.

Depending on what plants you opt for, terrariums require very little maintenance. Faster growing plants like the chlorophytum will need thining every now and again, but this really is the ideal way of growing if you're short on time but want some greenery in your home. Read my piece for more info on how to plant them up: I'll write a separate post soon with some extra info on the other elements of the piece: A hanging basket made from a colander and some funky plant pots made from a tea set.

It's the Weekend all week long

A couple of people have asked how the now not-so-new job is going.

The answer is, in short, great. Particularly now that stuff I thought up or said yes to, commissioned and saw through the editing and design process are being published. This week's feature is one of my favourites so far. It sprang from this blogpost where I bemoaned my ability to kill even toughies like lamb's ears. Regular contributor (and darn fine writer) Lia Leendertz asked some of the gardening world's great and the good what plants they've dispatched lately, and the results were revealing: a very diplomatic answer from Matthew Wilson, I thought. And it ends with a pithy quote from gardening god Christopher Lloyd.

Other recent top reads include garden blogger and podcaster Emma Cooper on weeds: the upside (from those of you who saw the stunning picture in the magazine itself, the fat hen was mine!) and everyone's favourite hat wearer James Alexander-Sinclair on a fantastic garden in Lincolnshire, although you really do need to see the images to appreciate this one.

As always, your comments welcome - whether laurels or darts.

Digging for dinner

There's an interesting piece in the Guardian today about how London's royal parks are considering setting up model allotments to show people how they can grow their own fruit and veg.

Of course my mentioning of the article has nothing to do with the fact that I wrote a sidebar for it on the decorative value of veg.

The hot topic: compost

The question of the day in the Guardian's G2 features section today is "how do I avoid smelly compost"? written by, er, me. As regulars will know, I get unfeasibly excited by composting, so this was a pleasure to write.

Meanwhile in the latest edition of Weekend Martyn Cox finds out what trends and plants will be red hot at Chelsea and Carol Klein writes about plants for texture.

Also: I am currently loving my sempervivums and lusting after this.

What I have been up to at Horticultural Towers

I've been a busy little bee of late: in addition to my "day job" editing the gardening pages of Weekend mag, and trying to move house (don't ask. No, really, don't ask ... I might explode with frustration). I have written a couple of extra things - a panel for the Guardian's G2 features supplement on theft from gardens (scroll down for my bit, a lighthearted look at what plants will and won't attract the attentions of any fashion-conscious thief - yes to topiary, no to pampas grass) and something for guardian.co.uk on composting timed to coincide with Compost Awareness Week. I am also going to try to write a weekly post on highlights from the latest edition of Weekend's gardening pages - last Saturday we published a lovely feature by Sue Stickland on growing carrots, and Carol Klein wrote about annual climbers to speedily clothe bare walls. And I must write a post about my mission to do a mega-mulch on my rather sad-looking allotment. I'm talking industrial (shouldn't that be agricultural?) amounts of well-rotted manure, cardboard, newspaper and straw ...

Grow your own supplement

I wrote something about sprouting seeds (alfalfa and the like) for the two-part Grow Your Own special supplement that appeared in the Guardian and Observer this weekend.

If you bought the Observer you can see a rather scary "demon eyes" picture of me and my sprouts on page 27 - if not you can read the piece online, thankfully sans picture.

Both guides - vegetables and fruit - are well worth a look. They're clearly laid out, full of great advice, and replete with words of wisdom from the likes of Carol Klein, Bob Flowerdew and Joy Larkcom. Add culinary advice from Angela Hartnett on how to use your crops in the kitchen and, well, what more do you want for free?

Agricultural apartheid

There's an interesting article here about what's being called "agricultural apartheid" - the problem of the limited range of seeds that can be sold commercially in Europe. (via Bifurcated Carrots)

Me on composting, over at News blog ...

I've written an only-very-slightly ranty post over at Guardian Unlimited's News blog about Compost Awareness Week, comlaining that celebrity endorsement for composting campaigns doesn't work. Your thoughts are welcome - but please comment on News blog rather than here.

Guerrilla gardening

We've got a great piece over at the Guardian Unlimited News blog about the guerrilla gardening movement:

... we must blitz our cities with plants. Authorities not only have other pressing priorities for their limited resources, but I believe they should focus on doing things that are beyond the abilities of local residents - small-scale, localised gardening is not one of them.

I think I may carry out some guerrilla gardening on a patch of rubbish-strewn ground near my house. I'm thinking mint, thyme, rosemary and other herbs. I'll bring you some before and after pictures soon.

Cracking cheese, Gromit

Allotments were in the news yesterday, with the Telegraph and the Guardian both running stories about a creature that sounded worryingly like it had stepped from the pages of a Wallace and Gromit film script menacing allotments in Northumberland.

A giant rabbit has been uprooting veg in allotments in Felton, near Morpeth:

Leeks and turnips have been ripped from the ground while Japanese onions, parsnips and spring carrots have been devoured. The main clues to the culprit are paw prints the size of a deer's and sightings of a cross between a hare and a rabbit with one ear larger than the other.

Where's Wallace and Gromit's Anti-Pesto when you need it, eh?

Despite the fact that my site borders farmland, rabbits haven't been a problem for me (so far). I am not sure what measures people who do suffer from mammalian pests such as deer, rabbits and so on take - fencing, a shotgun or all-night vigils. Do tell ...