Through The Seasons

Glorious winter planting

By garden designer Charlie Bloom. It’s coming to the end of the season and September is the month that hails a goodbye to full summer and hello to the onset of autumn. It is also the ideal month to plant out winter interest plants and bedding schemes as the ground is still warm and frosts are still a few months away, this gives the plants some time to establish before winter. Here some of my favourites.

Summer dreaming
By garden designer Linda Regal. Summertime is a time to dream, and what better place to let your imagination run free than a private retreat in the garden.  Everyone needs a place to which to escape and forget the world for a while, so make a space for yourself amidst the greenery.

Happy New … Garden!
By garden designer Angie Barker. Let's face it - January can be hard work. Christmas shopping is a distant memory, its back to work and there are the New Year resolutions to stick to. (By the way, my New Year resolution is not to have any!)

This is the season to be ... holly!
By garden designer Angie Barker. Father Christmas will be receiving lots of letters this year with requests for everything from Iggle Piggle to Wii consoles.

Nutcracker
Garden designer Andrew Fisher Tomlin goes nuts over Christmas. In these days of grow your own there is nothing more appropriate at this time of year than to think about planting some nut trees in your garden. Do it this month and you'll have your own supply of Christmas nuts next year.

Winter reflections
By garden designer John Frater. The garden in winter is wonderfully peaceful, but don't let it pass without using this valuable lull in activity to reflect and assess.

Planting ideas with Snowdrops

By garden designer Alice Bowe. Unlike most bulbs, which are best planted in the autumn, Snowdrops can take a while to establish as dry bulbs and so they are best planted "in the green" (that is just after flowering, while still in full leaf).

New Years Garden Resolutions
By garden designer Andrew Fisher Tomlin. I'm writing this looking out at my garden which is full of plants that have just come back from a garden we designed for the CBI conference. It's a jungle out there - literally. There are six huge Cordylines, a field of evergreens and a meadow of mature Phormiums.

Deck the Halls
By garden designer Andrew Fisher Tomlin. Christmas is coming and we're decorating our houses with all sorts of flowers and plants from the traditional to the contemporary and funky.

Autumn work for your lawn
By Derek W. Walder, Turf Expert. Now is the ideal time to take a close look at your lawn after the ravages of the summer.

Spring cleaning
By garden designer Andrew Fisher Tomlin. It's March and now is a great time to be out and about in your garden on a sunny day giving it a good spring clean and setting the scene for a great summer outdoors.

Tree time
By garden designer Andrew Fisher Tomlin. Regular readers of this column will know that I'm a bit of a tree hugger and proud of it! We're coming up to the best time of year to be planting trees.

Create your own Indian Summer
By garden designer Liz Saward. Let's face it, by the middle of September, most people's gardens are looking tired and a just a litte bit brown. 

As darkness falls
By garden designer Alice Bowe. Integrate light blooms in your planting, and see the twilight garden come alive.

Trees and hedges
By garden designer Andrew Fisher Tomlin. I love the Autumn! It's a special time of year when we can start putting the borders to bed for the winter and can look forward to putting our feet up soon!

Beautiful bulbs
By garden designer Andrew Fisher Tomlin. Plan now for a splash of Spring colour!