Oregano, or marjoram, is prized for its beautiful flowers and foliage and is a stalwart in the herb garden you shouldn’t be without.
If ever there was a herb which lives up to its name then its probably oregano.
Grown for its strong tasting and pungent leaves, oregano is a perennial herb that thrives in a warm, sunny position.
It is said to have been derived from the Greek 'oros' meaning mountain and 'ganos' meaning joy – hence ’joy of the mountain’.
Care centres in Somerset and the Cotswolds are now part of an expanding programme improving the wellbeing and quality of life for people affected by life-limiting illness, through active and passive gardening.
It isn’t a catchy title but that doesn’t matter - the work of Social and Therapeutic Horticulture is changing lives.
Put simply, a growing number of carers in hospices are putting their beliefs behind the fact that gardening is a wonderfully flexible medium which can transform lives regardless of age and disabilities.
After a series of mild autumn and winters more gardeners are finding autumn sowing a way to keep the garden alive.
It’s likely every year gardeners all over the country start to think that September and October are the times to start ‘putting the garden away’ for the winter.
Yet a series of mild winters would suggest that the much better option is to think of the autumn as the time to decide to keep the garden going through the winter.
Devon nurseryman Kevin Croucher urges those with smaller gardens to try growing dwarf varieties of fruit and start growing fruit against a wall as cordons fans or espaliers
Many people who enjoy their gardens only have small ones and often feel that they haven’t got the space to grow tree fruit.
Emma Heard from Bernaville Nurseries near Exeter looks at plants which give extra colour and provide food for hungry birds and wildlife- berry-bearing plants that flourish in autumn, creating colourful displays lasting well into winter.
As we all go in search of ‘berried treasure’ there are a number of ways to fit this collection of wonderful plants into your garden.
Elizabeth McCorquodale takes a look up high and enjoys the wonders of green roofs with all their noise reduction, pollution filtering benefits and shows how you might like to create one
Green roofs attracted quite a lot of attention a few years ago but now they have settled comfortably into the landscape, appearing without fuss on all sorts of buildings from grand avant-garde homes to factories and public buildings (my local council sports a rather lovely example) to modest garden sheds and garages.
Vegetables consist mainly of water with a relatively small amount of solid material that gives them flavour and texture. Withholding water might be thought to lead to more solid and stronger flavour and this is sometimes the case but not always.
If your garden needs more colour at the end of summer then here’s some options to lift the spirits in the autumn weeks ahead
Autumn colour in the garden is one of the great and underrated delights. Too often looking around the garden in August can reveal just a show of tired foliage and absence of colour.
Giant autumn vegetables, celebrity speakers and a celebration of the harvest season form the basis of the Malvern Autumn Show which returns on 23rd and 24th September.
More than 65,000 people are expected to flock to this year’s weekend show at the Three Counties Showground, Malvern, for this annual celebration of harvest fun and family entertainment.
Gill Heavens selects her favourites from members of the rose family commonly known as cinquefoils
If I were to decide to have a National Collection of plants, at the top of my list of potential candidates would be potentillas, commonly known as cinquefoils. The 500 species in this genus come in many forms; shrubs, annuals, biennials and perennials, which are mostly confined to the northern hemisphere. Their habitats range from lowlands to mountains and are found as far north as the Arctic Circle and as far south as Mexico.
