Growing Guides

You cut a jugful of beautiful flowers, bring them proudly indoors, and by morning half of them are hanging their heads — while a supermarket bunch cut weeks ago sits...

Bishy Barnabee's Growing Guides What to Sow in August The turning point of the growing year — when a little sowing now sets up your autumn, winter and early spring...

If someone told you there was a way to garden that gave you healthier soil, far fewer weeds and reliably good harvests while asking you to do less work, not...

In the 1830s, a young Englishwoman receiving a small hand-tied bouquet from an admirer did not simply see flowers — she saw a message. A red rose meant love. Rosemary...

Drying flowers is one of the great quiet magic tricks of the cottage garden. A bunch of Statice cut at the right moment, hung in the right place, becomes an...

July is the pivot month — the last chance to sow biennials for next year, the closing window for hardy annuals to bloom in autumn, and the first proper start...

As UK summers grow hotter and drier, a beautiful cottage border no longer needs a watering can chained to your hip. Discover the ten finest drought-tolerant flowers to grow from...

The cottage gardener's oldest, quietest, most rewarding habit — a brown paper bag, a pencil, and ten minutes a week through the rest of the summer. The seed-saving season opens...

Five minutes a week with a pair of snips, two simple habits learned in ten minutes — and a cottage garden that produces almost twice the flowers, for almost twice...

June is the bridge month between two cottage garden years. Biennials sown now flower next summer, last-window hardy annuals still have time to flower this year, and the kitchen garden...

Bees, butterflies, hoverflies and moths — your garden is the unsung hero of the British landscape's pollinator story. Our complete UK guide celebrates the joy of planting for pollinators, with...

Tall, stately spires of mauve-purple thimbles, freckled inside and beloved by bumblebees — foxgloves are one of the most romantic plants in the cottage garden. Our complete UK guide covers...