News - Page 11
The search is on for Ireland’s top amateur garden designers – and if you’ve got what it takes you could end up showcasing your talents on prime time TV!
Ireland's top amateur garden designers
RTE’s Super Garden is now in its ninth year and is looking for start-up landscapers, amateur gardeners or horticulture students to take part. The show follows five emerging garden designers as they compete for the honour of having their show garden exhib...
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Prune summer flowering clematis now – those big, showy stars of the season which take your breath away scrambling up a trellis or twining romantically around a climbing rose.
Prune Clematis
By now just a big tangle of brown stems remains of last year’s growth. Leave these in place and you’ll just get a lot of flowers at the top of the plant, with an unsightly mass of bare stems at the base.
Keep your summer-flowering cle...
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Install raised beds in the garden now and they’ll be primed and ready to plant once the season gets under way next month. Raised beds are great for vegetables but are also ideal for herbs and cut flowers.
Rasied Bed Gardening
They’re good for your plants, too. They hold all the nutrients in place, making the soil so rich you can really pack them to overflowing. And you’ll easily be able to reach into the centre without tre...
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Romance is in the air all over Ireland as Valentine’s Day brings the perfect excuse to spoil your loved one rotten.
Valentines Day in Ireland
Ireland has a special connection with Valentine’s Day, as the remains of St Valentine, patron saint of love, are said to be buried under a Dublin church. So it’s no wonder Ireland is the most romantic place to be this weekend.
Gardening Ideas For Your Valentines
To help yo...
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Over 80 gardens around the country are opening for the National Gardens Scheme Snowdrop Festival this month, celebrating the beauty of our best-loved early spring flower.
Snowdrop Festival
Some of the gardens are a galanthophile’s paradise with hundreds of different varieties, while others mix snowdrops with other early spring beauties like hellebores, reticulate irises and winter aconites.
At Devonshire Mill in Yorkshire drifts of the doubl...
Read more...Now in stock - We have fabulous bare root fruit trees at absolutely bargain prices. Now is the perfect time to plant bare root, during the dormant part of the year. By the time the soil warms up your trees will be all set to get growing for the season plus you get the benefit of the best value plants.
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If you’d like the chance to build a garden at one of Ireland’s leading festivals and win €400, the Clare Garden Festival would like to hear from you!
They’ve just launched their Pop-Up Garden Community Challenge to encourage community gardeners, youth groups, school gardeners and neighbours to show what they can do with a space just 3m x 3m.
The theme is ‘Greener Gardening’ and designs should aim to help householders and gardeners to protec...
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Slowly, slowly, the season begins to get into gear as you set about tidying borders and sowing the first seeds ready for the coming year. Here’s your list of jobs in the garden this month:
General tasks:
- Get new borders ready for planting during any sunny, dry spells, clearing away turf and weeds and adding lots of organic soil improver.
- Give paths and patios a good clean hosing off winter detritus and scrubbing away algae and dirt t...
Binoculars at the ready: the annual Big Garden Birdwatch kicks off this weekend, when gardeners and wildlife lovers get outside to paint a nationwide picture of the state of our garden birds.
The Big Garden Bird Watch
The initiative, run by the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, is now the world’s biggest wildlife survey. Last year more than 519,000 people counted an incredible 8,262,662 birds. Their findings have helped build up a detailed...
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Plant baby broad bean plants now for a super-early crop this summer. If you sowed seeds of winter- hardy varieties like ‘Aquadulce Claudia’ last autumn, they’ll be sturdy youngsters by now and can safely go in the ground over the next few weeks.
Planting Broad Beans
Choose a mild day to plant when the soil is workable, and cover with a clear polythene cloche after planting to keep them sheltered while they settle in – you’ll find easy-to- u...
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