Grow Your Own Fruit & Veg

Damsons are a subspecies of the Plum family and have a really high fruit rate, which is great for bakers, preservers or foragers in the garden. As Damsons have a high pectin rate, they set jam with just sugar alone, with no need for manufactured pectin additives. Damsons are a nutritious and versatile fruit with […]

Updated 2024: This raised bed guide will explain exactly when and how to use raised beds for successful gardening. Raised beds can be used in nearly all gardens regardless of the condition of your soil. It allows you to build up away from poor, stony ground and choose the soil you need for the types […]

Updated 2024: The grow your own movement has really taken off over the past decade here in the UK, along with No Dig gardening. You only have to look online to see Instagrammers and social media full of grow-your-own tips. After all, who doesn’t want to be able to grow the food that they put […]

It’s a real surprise that the mighty Medlar tree isn’t more popular for small gardens. Not only is it a well-behaved small fruit tree, but it is self-fertile. Meaning it produces fruits without the need for a pollinator tree. It’s also one of the only winter-fruiting trees, so why aren’t they more popular? This is […]

Sustainable, peat and chemical-free gardening is nothing new for the Barnsdale Gardens team, who have been growing in a peat-free compost for over 30 years and have had great success with the wide range of plants using this peat-free medium. Geoff Hamilton, was a pioneer in organic gardening using peat and chemical-free techniques and the […]

Growing your own fruit and vegetables is a fantastic way to engage with your garden, reduce your carbon footprint and help eat better organic produce. Tomatoes are one of our most popular fruits to buy in supermarkets and can be bought year-round (usually by being flown halfway around the world, sadly). Often, these ‘forced tomatoes’ […]

When I started this gardening blog, I was on a simple mission: to help inspire, educate and encourage all gardeners to succeed in their green spaces. One of the most exciting groups of gardeners I help is beginners or new gardeners. However, there are several common mistakes that all new gardeners make unless they have […]

As small garden trees and fruit trees start to grow each year the chances of lower branches becoming too heavy to support the fruit is a real issue. If you leave these lower branches to continue to grow and bear fruit the likelihood is they will start to droop to the flower and could tear […]

Comfrey is an incredible plant as it tolerates nearly all soil conditions and will live in both full sun and shade. Meaning you can grow Comfrey pretty much anywhere no matter what garden soil you have. Comfrey has long been used to help activate compost heaps, brew liquid plant food and help improve vegetable beds […]

So it turns out that life with plastic really ain’t that fantastic after all. Not given how little of it in the gardening world can be recycled, and most of it ends up in landfills, filling our earth with fragments of plastic that will take hundreds of years to fully break down. Ask any mindful […]