Gardener grows a foot-shaped carrot

This an old story but it made us smile...

A gardener who prides himself on growing boot-iful looking vegetables says he was shocked to discover a foot-shaped carrot in his allotment.

Stuart Boulton was harvesting his crop in Darlington when he noticed one of his carrots was oddly shaped, after clearing the soil from it he realised what it looked like.

With five knobbly ends growing off the main body the carrot looks just like a foot - albeit a slightly deformed and bright orange one.


Stuart then did what any proud gardener would, he posed for a picture with the carrot foot and made a soup with the it… he insists it didn't taste in the slightest bit sweaty. Read More

Hanging Basket Time

Now we think we've seen the last of the snow (although North Wales nights are still on the chilly side) we're turning our attention to making up some spectacular hanging baskets. Every year we're asked to make colourful displays for the many hotels and shops in the village.

This month we're taking orders for delivery in a few weeks time so don't miss out. Of course you will be able to visit the nursery and see a good selection of standard baskets but if you would like something special making up call Matthew on 01690 710870. And we promise to beat prices from any other local garden nursery or garden centre. Why not put us to the test?

Outdoor Garden Fountains

Gardens are great places to hang around and relax. At the same time, the sound of flowing water is tranquil and soothing. Wouldn’t it be great to merge the two things to create an ultimate combination? Outdoor garden water fountains can help you achieve just that.

There are many important things to look for when choosing fountains.

The first thing to consider is obviously the size - though a fountain may be great to look at, it most importantly needs to fit into your garden landscape.

If you have a relatively small backyard garden, it doesn’t make sense to install a grand fountain that covers most of your garden views.

The fountain must not stand out and be the sole focus in your garden. It should either blend in with the rest of your garden or the garden must enhance the fountain. Picking the right size outdoor garden fountain is vital.
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The Benefits Of Gardening (Infographic)

There are many great perks to gardening. It makes your home look welcoming, adds warmth to a bare room, and burns some extra calories. My mother is the queen of gardening. We have an elaborate rose garden in the front part of our yard, some mulberry trees greeting the driveway, and an impressive vegetable and herb garden out back. Of course, the success of my mothers gardening could not be possible if it wasn’t for her stinky compost.
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Visit Beautiful Betws

If you've never taken the opportunity to visit Betws-y-Coed in the beautiful Conwy Valley, you're missing out on a great experience and a memorable day out! I know we're biased but new visitors genuinely tell us how special our little 'alpine' village really is.

Do Trees Communicate?

Researchers at the University of British Columbia are concluding that trees are interacting with one another in a symbiotic relationship that helps the trees to survive. Connected by fungi, the underground root systems of plants and trees are transferring carbon and nitrogen back and forth between each other in a network of subtle communication. Similar to the network of neurons and axons in the human brain, the network of fungi, roots, soil and micro-organisms beneath the larger ‘mother trees’ gives the forest its own consciousness. Read More

Hotbed of ingredients: spicy plants to grow in the garden

If you like food with a fiery kick, warm yourself from the inside out with these hot and spicy ingredients, all of which can be grown in the garden.
Ginger (Zingiber officinale)



Grow ginger root in the greenhouse or on a warm windowsill in large buckets. Take a root with a bud and bury in potting compost – the leaves are pretty enough to be grown as a houseplant. In his book Homegrown Revolution, James Wong tells us we can grow hardy Japanese ginger Zingiber mioga outside in this country – in plenty of organic matter, in sun or partial shade (from Edulis) – a beautiful metre-tall lily with bright pink buds that can be sliced and steamed in stir-fries and broths.
Make quick fizzy ginger beer by grating an inch of ginger, chopping a couple of inches of lemon grass, add sugar to taste, then blitz. Strain and top up with sparkling mineral water, add ice and lemon verbena leaves. I drink hot lemon juice every morning, with a sprinkling of turmeric, a spoonful of honey and a little shaved ginger.
Keep your ginger root in the freezer for a longer life. Read More

Black Sabbath helps plants to grow but Sir Cliff Richard 'kills them'

For one of Britain's leading gardeners has said playing a catalogue of Sir Cliff's greatest hits to plants could in fact kill them off.


Chris Beardshaw, from Gardeners’ Question Time, claimed different genres of music would encourage plants to grow at different rates, with songs by Black Sabbath helping them to bloom.
But, in an experiment conducted by his horticultural students, plants played the collected works of Sir Cliff “all died”. Read More

Britain's oldest oak tree blown down

Freak 50mph winds wreacked havoc in parts of North Wales on Wednesday, forcing down Britain's oldest oak tree, blowing trampolines into the air and tipping recycling banks over.

The ancient Pontfadog tree in the Ceiriog Valley near Chirk, which is believed to be 1,200 years old, met its sad end at the mercy of last night’s gusts.

Scores of people took to Facebook to mourn the beloved oak, which was said to be spared when King Henry II had his men cut down the Ceiriog Woods in 1165. Read More

Garden Layout Ideas

A vegetable garden can be a useful and beautiful thing. The following garden layout ideas will help you design your own vegetable garden.

Add walks and arbors and interplant with beautiful flowers and herbs to make the vegetable garden both pretty and productive. Keep the garden near your kitchen. It will be easy to run out and pick a few things you need, and you can spy on the garden from your window. Picking tomatoes after you see them blush crimson is a perfect way to get them at their best.

A sunflower stem looks
lovely when surrounded
by morning glories
Plant vertically to save space. Instead of letting beans, cucumbers, melons, and squash sprawl across the ground, you can let them climb up a trellis or arbor.

Add height to a vegetable garden with a tepee covered with bean and pea vines. This space saver works similarly to a trellis but has a different look. Make the tepee of six or eight 6-foot-high poles tied together at the top. Plant pole beans, lima beans, or peas around each pole, and they will twine up to the top.

Plant morning glory seeds around the stems of sunflowers. Lanky sunflowers can look quite barren once the flowers are done blooming. But when clad in morning glories, their beauty lasts for the rest of the growing season.



Side-dress long-growing crops, such as indeterminate tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers, with a balanced vegetable-garden fertilizer in order to keep them producing. After the first harvest, sprinkle some granular fertilizer around the perimeter of the plants, then work it lightly into the soil, and water well. The extra nutrients can encourage blossoming of new flowers and development of fruits afterward. Read More

Garden not up to scratch? Be inspired by 10 of the best in Wales

Royal Horticultural Society chooses the Welsh gardens from all four corners of the country that will spur you to perfection.

Bodnant Garden, Tal-y-Cafn, Conwy

Another National Trust site, this garden boasts superb collections of magnolias, rhododendrons and camellias, in an idyllic setting above the River Conwy with views over Snowdonia. Of its many interesting features, most notable is the laburnum arch, glorious from mid-May to early June, the lily terrace, the curved, stepped pergola, covered with a riot of climbing plants in summer and the dell garden, a tranquil place of natural beauty. www.bodnantgarden.co.uk


Portmeirion, Penrhyndeudraeth

This romantic coastal village was created by architect Sir Clough Williams-Ellis from 1926 to 1976 in order to show that “the development of a naturally beautiful site need not lead to its defilement”. The Italianate village is carved into the surrounding Gwyllt woodlands, surrounded by sub-tropical gardens with rare and exotic plants and miles of sandy beaches. Other highlights include the rhododendron arboretum in May, exuberant summer bedding and thousands of hydrangeas in late summer and autumn. www.portmeirion-village.com

Read more of this fantastic article at Wales Online

The Blackberry Garden by Papaver

This is a gardening blog well worth reading that has some beautiful pictures... Read about Papaver's visit to Penrhyndeudraeth here.



The sun was shining and glinting off the sea, it was a beautiful morning and I had nothing planned. As I sat drinking tea pondering the meaning of life I started to wonder if there might be an NGS garden open and preferably near by. Well there was, just two miles up the road there was Bwlch y Fedwen in Penrhyndeudraeth, so I decided that was fate telling me I should visit.

15 houseplants to improve indoor air quality.

Plants help clean indoor air, which is typically far more polluted than outdoor air. Find out what common toxins these plants can filter out of the air in your home.



In the late 1980s, NASA and the Associated Landscape Contractors of America studied houseplants as a way to purify the air in space facilities. They found several plants that filter out common volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Lucky for us the plants can also help clean indoor air on Earth, which is typically far more polluted than outdoor air. Other studies have since been published in the Journal of American Society of Horticultural Science further proving the science. Here's our handy of list of the best air-filtering plants. (Plus, at the bottom of this story, you'll find links about plants that are good for the air and also safe for your pets.)


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Six unusual herbs to sow in your garden

Whether you’re a hardy veteran in the greenhouse or making your first steps into indoor growing on a windowsill, a few simple tips can help you get the most out of your plants during the early stages, says Andrew Davidson, of mail order veg plant specialists Quickcrop (01788 298795).
The company grows 1.5 million seedlings every year, so has a wealth of experience when it comes to ensuring seeds survive to become healthy plants.


1 Water carefully. You’ll be surprised how quickly plants will dry out in a greenhouse on a hot day, but don’t overwater as saturated soil has no air spaces and can “suffocate” plants. More people kill plants by over- rather than underwatering.
2 Water in the morning rather than evening. Evening watering, given the cooler night-time temperatures is a bit like going to bed in wet pyjamas for plants. It can weaken them and promote disease.
3 If you are starting out, make sure plants don’t get pot-bound (roots emerging from drainage hole). This means the plant has outgrown the pot and the ratio of roots to soil is too high. Plants will dry out quickly, so repot to a larger container. Read More

The Poison Garden

The Alnwick Garden is a complex of formal gardens adjacent to Alnwick Castle in the town of Alnwick, Northumberland, England. Inspired by the legendary botanical gardens in Padua where the Medicis plotted the untimely, frothing ends of their enemies, an English duchess created this garden, dedicating it entirely to flora which are deadly and/or narcotic.

Behind big black gates, the carefully curated garden contains about 100 legendary killers like Atropa belladonna (deadly nightshade), Strychnos nux-vomica (strychnine), and Conium maculatum (hemlock).

Guides explain their deadly properties while keeping ne’er-do-wells and curious children away from the plants, warning them: “Do not touch any of the plants, don’t even smell them. There are plants here that can kill you.” Read More

New cafe coming soon

We've been busy over the past year designing and planning for a brand new cafe at the garden nursery. We had hoped to be open for the 2013 growing season but time ran away with us and we've had to focus back on our plants.
The main cafe building is nearly complete and soon we'll be decorating and fitting out the kitchen and cafe seating area. If everything goes to plan we hope to open in August or September. Keep checking these pages to find out more. We're very excited so we below we've posted some pictures of the progress so far.

See more pictures here

How To Make Compost with Your Own Homemade Compost Bin

Organic matter decomposes into compost that people use to fertilize and condition soil. Compost attracts earthworms and helpful insects, builds soil structure, and facilitates important microbial activity. Save your garden waste, grass and plant clippings, manure and food scraps in a homemade compost bin to generate your own rich and natural soil conditioner. Read More

RHS diary: what to do in the garden in April

Top of the list this month...




The arrival of spring can mean fast growth. To keep on top of the garden, plan ahead. Here are some of the main points to consider:
In sunny weather, temperatures can rise sharply in greenhouses and cold frames. To prevent damage to seedlings, make sure your plants are well ventilated.
Weed seedlings appear rapidly this month. Remove them before they flower and set further seeds.
Lift and transplant self-sown annuals and perennials into more suitable positions for flowering. Read More

Rare tree flowers for first time in 91 years

The staff at Rowallane Garden in Northern Ireland have waited a long time for this: For the first time, an extremely rare 91-year-old tree has bloomed, according to BBC News.

"We had noticed in June that the tree was making flower bud growth which has slowly developed over the past week or so," head gardener Averill Milligan said. "We were intrigued to see what they were going to look like and have been keeping a close eye on it."




The tree is a Chinese goat horn tree (Carrierea calycina), a plant belonging to the willow family and one of only two of its kind in Ireland.

Records show that the tree was originally planted from seeds brought to the United Kingdom by famed botanist and plant explorer Ernest H. Wilson in 1908. Both of the specimens alive in Ireland today are the last surviving goat horn trees from Wilson's seed introduction.

It's a mystery why the tree is flowering now after being dormant for nearly a century, but the patient members of the Rowallane staff aren't lingering on the question. They're busy stopping to smell the flowers, which, according to the report, has a "scent like gentle levity". After the pale white blossoms mature, they transform into long, curved fruits that resemble a goat's horn.
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