News - Page 54
Plant lilies in containers and you'll be able to enjoy their magnificent display up close next summer, including that heady, intoxicating perfume. Growing these spectacular flowers in pots is a great technique for making the most of their many fine qualities: drop them, pot and all, into gaps in the border just as they're about to flower, or move them right by the back door where you'll get the full force of the scent as you leave the house.
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Things are turning spooky in the garden over the next couple of weeks as ghosties and ghoulies compete with giant pumpkins for top billing on Hallowe'en Night. Ireland's gardens are joining in the fun with lots of ghoulish celebrations.
At the unmissable Mount Stewart, Newtownards – recently voted among the top ten best gardens in the world - the whole garden will be lit up for an enchanting evening of story telling, music and games for all...
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Plant spring bedding to get next year's display under way. There are lots of bare-root plants and plugs on the garden centre shelves right now, and since they're all hardy and can overwinter where you plant them it's a really economical way of making sure your garden is packed with colour early in the year. Here are some of the best:
Wallflowers: The familiar sprays of these beautifully scented cottage garden favourites set o...
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Plant for autumn colour to keep your garden looking gorgeous well into the first frosts. It's a great time of year to get new shrubs and trees into the ground and there's a fantastic range in our garden centre, all brilliantly colourful at this time of year. Here are a few of our favourites:
Toffee apple tree (Cercidiphyllum japonicum) adds scent to the autumn display, releasing a sweet perfume like toffee apples as it drops its yellow, red a...
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Time to put the veg garden to bed after a fantastic year, with enough summer sunshine to coax fruit into a frenzy and filling basket after basket of beans, fat pea pods and elegant courgettes.
As the summer harvest slows, though, it's time to get the veg garden ready for its winter rest so it's in perfect shape for doing it all again next year. Follow our step-by-step guide and you'll be raring to go ag...
Plant your bulbs this month as autumn is the key time for getting daffodils, crocuses, winter aconites, muscari, hyacinths and of course tulips into the ground. Choose from the rainbow of varieties now available in our garden centre, then follow our ten golden rules so they're raring to go next spring.
Get the timing right – plant most bulbs now, but leave...
Start a school garden and you'll join a small army of enthusiastic youngsters learning while getting their hands well and truly dirty all across Ireland.
This week sees Ireland's first-ever school garden education conference at the Marino Institute in Dublin (www.mie.ie). It's a fantastic way to learn about school gardening, whether you're already running a school gardening club or...
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What to do in the garden in October:
Autumn is in the air this month, with the leaves turning and the nights turning chill, bringing on one of the year's most spectacular explosions of colour as the trees turn red, yellow and burnished copper. Keep the fireworks going with our must-do jobs this month:
General tasks:
October's plant of the month is the heuchera, the plant that changed the way we look at leaves forever. Heucheras take coloured foliage to a whole new level, with varieties in every shade from deepest near-black through red, silver, amber and lime-green. Their sheer diversity allows you to experiment with different effects whatever your gardening style: in fact no garden should be without a few of these versatile grow-anywhere plants.
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Stock up on spring bulbs to fill your garden with colour just when you need it most, as the chill of winter gives way to the warmth of a new gardening year. Plan your display carefully and you can have colour from December right through till May with bulbs you can buy and plant now.
Among the first to peep above ground are winter aconites and of course snowdrops. Add brilliant blue