Preserving Fruit Flavors in Alcohol: Homemade Liqueurs

by THERESA LOE

When we discuss food preservation, we are usually talking about canning, dehydrating, freezing or fermenting. But did you know that you can also preserve fruit in alcohol, such as brandy or vodka? It is a way of preserving the flavor or essence of the fruit for later use.

This method consists of steeping fresh or frozen fruit in alcohol for several weeks. In the end, you end up with some “drunken fruit” (good as a dessert topping) and a flavorful alcohol that can be used to make dazzling cocktails, punch, deserts or sauces. But if you take it a step further and add a little sugar syrup to the mix , you now have delicious homemade liqueur! WOW!



Homemade Raspberry Liqueur: This little gem is versatile in the kitchen and so easy to make.Read More

8 Low-Maintenance Outdoor Plants for the Busy Gardener

Keeping a garden can seem like an intimidating task. It's daunting especially for someone who is a beginner! We've rounded up eight plants that can handle tough love. So even if you don't have a green thumb, they'll still survive and thrive! Show More

Hard to kill container garden plants

Have a sunny spot on your patio, deck or porch? Need an accent for a bright spot in your garden? These five plants are hard to kill and will thrive in container gardens in full sun. They are also lovely and common enough to possibly find in your supermarket. However, just because they're common doesn't mean you can't make them look spectacular with the right container.

1. Calibrachoa or Million Bells


If I could only pick one container garden plant to grow (though I shudder to think of that), it would probably be calibrachoa, also known as million bells. This plant comes in about a million spectacular colors that range from pure white to different shades of pink to deep purple.

Calibrachoa look great in almost any container garden. The prolific blossoms attract hummingbirds and butterflies and will go strong all summer with regular feeding.

Calibrachoas don't need deadheading but they do need consistent watering and good drainage - no soggy roots for these guys.

You can't go wrong with million bells in almost any container. Read More

Craft How-to: Hanging Herb Garden

Many herbs, like rosemary, thyme and chives, love the heat of the sun, so a south-facing brick wall is the perfect place to grow a hanging garden of your favorite flavors. Keep them watered, as these little pots will dry out quickly at the height of the summer growing season.


1. Punch eight holes in the bottom of each little pot using an awl, a hammer and nail or a drill. Herbs detest standing in wet soil and need good drainage to thrive.

2. Fill each pot with a handful of potting soil that contains a bit of sand. Herbs produce their best flavor for cooking in soil that is not too rich in organic matter. Read More

Arne Maynard's garden at Allt-y-Bela

Topiary yews beside the rough, winding farm track signal your approach, but only at the very last minute, after you have emerged between the trees, does Arne Maynard spring the surprise of his house.
It is a memorably theatrical vision: a renaissance Welsh tower house boldly painted in the richest shade of rusty ochre I have ever seen, accompanied by clusters of trees pleached, spiralled and otherwise snipped into shape, and all set off by the vibrant green of the surrounding Monmouthshire hills.
It is also a striking contrast to his previous home in the flat Lincolnshire fenland, where Maynard, one of our leading garden designers and a Chelsea Flower Show gold medallist, had spent 10 years making an elaborate five-acre formal garden of orchards, box-edged flower borders, parterres and pavilions. I was astonished to hear, in 2006, that he was selling up and starting again. Read More

How to turn your garden into a hedgehog haven

This week is Hedgehog Awareness Week. Hedgehog numbers continue to decline around Britain, and gardeners are being encouraged to help reverse the trend.


“There is so much the gardener can do, and it’s more important than ever,” says Fay Vass, chief executive of the British Hedgehog Preservation Society (BHPS).

Simple ways to help are to ensure that there is a route in and out of your garden (they need a 5in gap), and that any ponds or pools are easy to enter and exit. Take care to move piles of rubbish before burning them, and check before you stick a fork into a compost heap. Reducing your use of pesticides can also help to create a hedgehog-friendly garden.

More proactively, gardeners can dedicate a corner of their garden to the creatures. This area should be left wild, with piles of leaves and organic debris for shelter. You can also provide a shallow dish of fresh water, meat-based pet food or chopped unsalted peanuts. Read More

Eye Candy: 10 Vegetable Gardens You'll Love to Garden

Vegetable gardens don't have to be anything fancy. A plot of tilled earth in a sunny location - that's about it.


Although such spaces do the job, they don't necessarily offer the most welcoming work environment. In this meal of eye candy, we're offering up 10 vegetable gardens in which we'd actually love to spend time - weeding or not! Read More

Gardener spends £20,000 and three years building Britain's biggest water-powered cuckoo clock

A 72-year-old amateur gardener has spent three years and £20,000 building Britain's biggest water-powered cuckoo clock - which is the size of a house.
Richard Pim designed and built the 25ft tall clock, complete with a 3ft wooden cuckoo which pops out every hour and chimes with a huge pipe organ.



It is powered by a complex system of cantilevers, counterweights and pulleys which convert energy from a passing stream.
Mr Pim, who is a retired hydrogeologist used his experience to design and build the wooden structure at his water gardens in Herefordshire. Read More

Gardening For Fitness By Andy Machin

Gardening is generally thought of as a pleasant, genteel pastime to while away the hours. Though you may be surprised that time spent tending your garden can help with both your physical and cardiovascular fitness. It will not make you pumped up and buff however time spent in the garden can help to give you a general all-over workout whilst you are tending to your plants, weeding or even just cutting the grass.

Think about that for a moment. Just about any activity you take in the garden is a form of exercise. Bending down to weed and standing up again repeatedly, digging holes to plant new stuff, fetching and carrying bags of fertiliser, pushing the lawnmower around to cut the grass and all the emptying of the cuttings in to a sack to be disposed of. It's all exercise in the fresh air with the added bonus of something productive whether that be a beautifully manicured flower bed or a few vegetables for the dinner table.

As with any other form of exercise, a bit of a warm up first before you hit the garden is not a bad idea. A little light stretching to warm up the muscles and tendons you'll be using out in the garden will help to get you moving. Also, beware that the repeated bending down and squatting whilst weeding can be bad for your back so be sure to give yourself a few minutes break often to protect against stress and strain injuries associated with being in unnatural positions for long periods. Then after your warm up, get out there and hit the garden to continue your workout. Read More

Victoria Glendinning on the best gardening books

There are gardening books for instruction, and gardening books to read for pleasure. The best of the latter is the late Christopher Lloyd’s classic The Well-Tempered Garden (1970). Like all his books, this drew on his long experience in the garden at Great Dixter in East Sussex. He wrote well and his style, like his garden preferences, is personal and nicely opinionated.

At the other end of the scale is another oldie, The Reader’s Digest Illustrated Guide to Gardening (1978), my bible when I first had a garden. I later discarded it – only to buy it again second-hand, unable to live without its stout hessian binding, its succinct descriptions and general understated excellence.

Nor can I do without the Royal Horticultural Society’s Illustrated Plants For Places (2001), a fat, squat little handbook telling you what is most likely to thrive in different soils and varieties of sites. This saves you from much heartbreak and failure. Read More

20 Plants For Garden Pathways

There are infinite numbers of plants available to cultivate in your garden. But, there are very few varieties of plants that can be grown on pathways, because most of the plants are too sensitive to tolerate people’s feet.

Here is a list of some very common plants which you can use to decorate the walkways of your garden.

1. Irish moss
It is one of the most important family member of Moss but much different from other plants of Moss family. It is easy to cultivate these plants on pathways. They spread very rapidly and are blessed with a quality to tolerate heavy foot traffic.


2. Alchemilla alpine or Alpine Lady’s Mantle
They look very pretty with the bright green leaves and become more attractive from the last spring to the arrival of summer when it blooms beautiful yellow flowers.


3. Brass Buttons or Leptinella Squalida
Fascinating Brass Buttons are low growing plants that spread at a high speed. These evergreen plants are excellent to use on pathways and the most exciting thing about them is that they are very easy to take care of. Read More

Containing garden enthusiasm

If you want to grow veggies and herbs but don’t have a yard, no worries. You can grow produce in containers on a deck, patio, or balcony, and reap a hefty harvest of fresh food for your dinner table. Plant breeders know that after taste, home gardeners want a high yield in a small space, so they’ve developed varieties that can grow in a small area, and even flourish in containers. Here are six simple steps to get you started.


When you’re ready to begin potting up vegetables and herbs, opt for transplants – seedlings that have already been started – rather than starting from seed. Bonnie Plants has a wide variety of veggie and herb transplants, many of them compact varieties perfect for containers, available at garden retailers nationwide.

Use a premium quality potting mix. Don’t skimp here – a quality mix holds moisture but drains well, giving plant roots the perfect balance of air, moisture, and stability. Read bag labels to look for quality ingredients such as aged (composted) bark, perlite, lime or dolomite, and sometimes moisture-holding crystals. Quality potting mix stays fluffy all season long – it does not contain actual dirt that would compact with frequent watering. Read More

The Creepiest Flower On Earth!

Tacca Chantrieri, commonly known as the "Bat Flower," is found in tropical areas of Australia and is probably one of the strangest and creepiest flowers in the world. See More

10 Homemade Organic Pesticides

Ever wonder what farmers did hundreds of years ago to fight off crop pests? Long before the invention of harmful chemical pesticides (yes, the kind that is linked to cancerous cellular activity), farmers and householders came up with multiple remedies for removing insect infestations from their garden plants.



The following list will offer some of our favorite, all-natural, inexpensive, organic methods for making bug-busting pesticides for your home garden. Read More

Make your landscaping butterfly-friendly

There is something magical about butterflies as they flit from flower to flower in the garden. These winged beauties are not only stunning to watch but they also serve an important role as pollinators, spreading pollen from flower to flower, leading to fertilization and ultimately seed production. The activities of butterflies and other pollinators, like hummingbirds and bees, help to ensure that various plant species multiply and persist.


By growing certain combinations of plants and providing the right setting, you can attract butterflies and other welcome pollinators to your garden. Here are some tips for attracting butterflies.

1. Certain butterflies will only lay their eggs on specific plants. Find out what types of butterflies are in your area. This can be done through observation or by utilizing field guides.

2. You will need to plant both host and nectar plants. Host plants provide larval food for caterpillars and a place for them to lay their eggs. Once the caterpillars become butterflies, nectar plants are an important food source. If you grow herbs for cooking, plant a few extra for the butterflies.

3. Situate your butterfly garden in a location that receives 4-6 hours of direct sun.

4. Provide a source of shallow water (puddles are great), warm flat rocks for butterflies to sun on and some protection from strong winds. Shrubs are a good way to provide the necessary shelter. Read More

Llandudno Victorian Extravaganza 4-6th May

As if you needed a reason to visit North Wales this bank holiday weekend...
Once again it's the annual Extravaganza event which sees people flocking to the coastal town.

Llandudno is bustling with Victorian buildings and structures, and retaining their original look play an excellent part in this fantastic event. One of these great buildings is the Llandudno Pier, based at the foot of the Great Orme, be sure to go and visit this attraction.

And of course whilst your visiting take a trip down to beautiful Betws-y-Coed! Just twenty minutes drive down the Conwy Vallley. Find out more about the event

RHS diary: what to do in the garden in May

This is your last chance to insert plant supports, stakes and string and netting in herbaceous borders, before tall plants flop during wind and rain.
Hang pheromone traps in apple trees to indicate when to spray against codling moths.
Net strawberries to prevent damage by birds, and place straw or Mypex mats around the fruiting plants to prevent soil-splash damage to the developing fruit in wet weather.
Continue to remove weeds before any of them flower and set seed. Pay particular attention to weeds such as hairy bittercress (Cardamine hirsuta) that can flower and seed on plants just 2cm high. Read More

They may have made it into the Chelsea Flower Show, but gnomes are still gnaff

Gnomes, after a century in the wilderness, have come back into the fold. The latest stamp of approval for these garden ornaments, once the height of bad taste, has come from the greenest-fingered Briton of the lot: Alan Titchmarsh.


A party was held this week to celebrate the centenary of the Royal Horticultural Society, an event where the discussion, you might hope, revolved around the honeybee crisis, or the challenge of cultivating peonies during the terrible winter. But, no. All the chatter was of gnomes.
“Don’t tell Prince Charles,” said Titchmarsh, dropping names like a granite boulder into a delicate rockery of bonsai, “but I’ve got two gnomes in my garden. What’s more, they are of Prince William and the Duchess of Cambridge!” Read More