Dave Allan: Gardening is good for your mental health
What gardener can resist a gentle stroll on a warm summer’s evening, armed with secateurs and an inviting glass of wine, snipping off spent blooms to show off the fresh burgeoning ones.
Here are my secrets to growing - and preserving - herbs
If you grow more herbs than you need fresh, why not preserve some? Depending on the species, drying and jarring, freezing or saving seeds for grinding are options. Or, in a few cases, simply keep using leaves during the winter.
The unusual plants that absorb CO2 from the atmosphere during the hours of darkness
Sedums or stonecrops are succulents that make the perfect carpet in difficult stony spots in the garden where there’s very little soil. They soften the edges of a bed by colonising bordering slabs and will romp along drystane dykes or walls. They’re also used in green roofs.
Don't come home to a jungle, how to prepare your garden for your summer holiday
If only preparing the garden for your summer holiday was as easy as packing a suitcase. But time and thought spent before you go should prevent you being greeted by a jungle when you get home.
DAVE ALLAN How can Scottish gardeners cope with these cool days and wet nights?
Day length and weather conditions determine how well our crops grow and the recent endlessly cold, wet spell has stressed many of them leading to possible bolting. So be prepared.
DAVE ALLAN
I love our Scottish term ‘bramble’ not the dreary, generic English ‘blackberry’
Every inch counts in a small garden, so make as much use of walls as of traditional open ground to let you grow delicious space-hungry fruit such as our Scottish Brambles or Tayberries.
This popular plant could live for a 100 years in your garden
Few plants can surpass Peonies for their sumptuous beauty. From late May till the end of June, a selection of different cultivars brings glamour to our gardens- and as I see their bursting buds in the garden I’m inspired to write this column.
DAVE ALLAN You could even eat these perfect early summer flowers (if you were brave enough)
Camasssias are the perfect early summer successors to snowdrops and daffodils in a grassy, sunny part of the garden. Like most flowers they prefer moist, well-drained and fairly fertile soil but, as I’ve found, they’ll cope with partial shade and pretty poor ground. Even if they then don’t reach the expected height.
Dave Allan: Is there a better way to tame weeds than good old-fashioned weeding?
Weeds are our most successful but unwelcome garden plants. As a new gardening year dawns, they are the trail blazers, ready and willing fill every inch of ground.
