To grow blueberries in the UK you need one thing above all: acid soil, with a pH between 4.5 and 5.5. Most British gardens do not have it, which is why the most reliable way to grow blueberries here is in a large pot of ericaceous compost, watered with rainwater rather than tap water. Plant … Read more
Garlic is one of those crops that makes you feel like a proper gardener for almost no effort. You push a single clove into the soil in autumn, more or less forget about it over winter, and the following summer you dig up a fat bulb of home-grown garlic that knocks the socks off anything … Read more
This article contains affiliate links. If you buy through one of my recommended links I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. I only recommend products I genuinely think are worth buying. Strawberries were the first proper fruit I ever grew, back when I had no idea what I was doing, … Read more
Lavender is the plant people most often ask me about, and the one they most often kill. There is a particular sort of disappointment that comes from planting a lovely young lavender in spring, watching it flower beautifully through summer, and then finding it brown, woody and half dead the following spring. I have had … Read more
Thyme is the herb I recommend to people who think they cannot grow herbs. It genuinely thrives on neglect. The worst thing you can do to thyme is treat it kindly, because the kindness usually involves rich soil and regular watering, both of which it hates. My oldest thyme plant has been going for over … Read more
The first three rosemary plants I bought all died in their first winter. Not because of frost, although that is what I assumed at the time, but because they had been sitting in waterlogged Oxfordshire clay since October and the roots had simply rotted. By the time spring came around they looked fine on top … Read more
Coriander has caught me out more times than any other herb. Twenty-odd years of growing it in Oxfordshire and I still occasionally end up with a patch of plants that bolts to seed after a fortnight, leaving me with thin yellow stems and white umbellifer flowers instead of the bushy leafy plants I was hoping … Read more
Chives were the first herb I ever grew successfully. Twenty-odd years on, I still rate them as the easiest, most forgiving plant in any UK garden. Mine come up every March without me doing anything, crop until October, and disappear quietly back into the soil for winter. There is no fussing, no rescuing, no propagation … Read more
The first thing anyone needs to know about growing mint in the UK is also the thing that nearly nobody tells you until it is too late. Mint, if you let it, will take over an entire flower bed in two years. I learned this the hard way in my second proper growing year in … Read more
Parsley is one of those herbs that everyone grows badly at least once before they grow it well. My first attempts in my Oxfordshire garden were a slow disaster of patchy germination, plants that bolted to seed in their first summer, and plants that yellowed and died for no obvious reason. The truth is that … Read more