Stephanie's Garden Blog

The Ultimate Guide to Wildlife Gardening - a guest blog from Green Gardens about the benefits of attracting wildlife to your garden and advice on planning a wildlife friendly garden

One of Capability Brown's great skills was using structures and buildings to enhance vistas, something which is seen in many of his designs and has been continued in gardens to this day. When I am looking at working on a clients garden, there will no doubt be some sort of structure included and whilst that may be a building such as a shed or summerhouse, it can also be a beautiful pergola or arch for climbing roses and clematis or just attractive supports for growing plants in beds and borders.

The main point behind growing your own vegetables is how much better they taste fresh from the garden. The only failsafe way to guarantee harvesting vegetables at the optimal time is to taste test. However, there are some guidelines for judging when vegetables are ripe and ready for harvest. Keep in mind that great flavour isn?t always a simple matter of size or colour.

Every gardener has been there, after spending countless hours tending, watering, feeding your plants a pest invades or some extreme weather damages your plants and wipes out all your hard work...

A mini heatwave hit the Kitchen Garden this week so the focus has been on trying to keep the plants happy - especially the leafy crops which can succumb to the heat!

One of our team is a keen gardener and we love seeing the updates from the garden - obviously a few Harrod Horticultural products dotted about the garden too!

With it set to be the hottest few days of the year so far, make sure you are doing all you can to look after your plants as they will be feeling the heat too!

Powdery Mildew has struck our courgettes in the Harrod Horticultural HQ garden...

Our blackcurrants are looking black, fat and juicy and about ready for picking. I'll choose a nice sunny morning to head off into the fruit cage armed with a trug and some snips to harvest them before heading back into the kitchen to make some jam.