Summer Gardening

June is the month in the garden where nearly everything is looking its best. Roses should now be in full bloom (especially if you’ve followed my rose pruning guide in the winter), ornamental grasses will be swaying in the breeze and your herbaceous perennials will all be bursting into flower. It’s typically a month where […]

Updated 2024: Flower beds and borders are the staples of any garden, and they come in all shapes and sizes! I get asked all the time for help when it comes to garden design and planting flower beds. Given the endless opportunities, it can seem overwhelming to decide where to start. Most new gardeners simply […]

Plants are incredibly tough, but during heat waves and summer, they may need a bit more assistance in the hydration department. If you’ve recently planted new shrubs, trees, or herbaceous plants, you’ll have to help them out by watering them until they are established. Top 10 Garden Water Saving Hacks If you’ve planted bedding plants, […]

We seem to have a bit of an issue with pruning as gardeners. I remember when I first started gardening, the thought of cutting off parts of the plants I’d spent ages nurturing felt horrific. I let them grow however and wherever they wanted. Just grateful they were growing. However, this laissez-faire approach always ends […]

I’m often asked by new and experienced gardeners how to prune fruit trees in summer. Many gardeners know of winter pruning before spring as housekeeping but summer pruning often gets overlooked. Maybe its the euphoria of long sunny days, flowers all around the garden and hazy nights watching sunsets. However, if you fail to keep […]

Watering a garden can be a time consuming and sometimes thankless task. In a heatwave, it is essential to efficiently water your plants to stop them from wilting, getting stressed or dying due to exhaustion. Before you reach for the sprinkler and set your alarm for 5 am, you may want to read this guide […]

Everyone has their preference when it comes to colour. I’m a sucker for the reds, orange and yellows of the colour wheel. I absolutely love planting up red hot colours for garden design clients bringing that feeling of summer to a border. When I started to design the #explodingatomgarden the red hot central core was […]

High impact borders can bring the wow factor to your garden. It doesn’t matter whether you have a postage stamp sized garden or a few acres, the principles are the same. Here in the Exploding Atom Garden, I’ve been planting up what I’ve nicknamed the ‘Moody Goth Border’. The aim for this border is to […]

I must admit I was intrigued when I got an email out of the blue asking to come to see some community gardens up in Bury. It wasn’t just the offer of tea, slices of cake and seeing some beautiful borders; it was the fact that these gardens had been created from scratch only a […]