Landscape Juice

Tips on Protecting trees from wind

After hot and humid weather there very frequently follows on with a storm.

Make sure that you have staked trees correctly because anything that is long and leggy are now vulnerable to a bashing.

Torrential rain and strong winds and the accompanying lightening and thunder could destroy or severely hamper the season in one foul swoop.

How do I kill ivy - Hedera helix

Killing Ivy in the garden is a tough job and I get a lot of queries about it. I have received this email from a gardener in Portugal.

"I have searched but haven't yet found a way to kill some branches of a Hedera Helix that continues to invade my property from under the ground. When the leaves come to the top of the soil I apply Roundup, but although the leaves die the branch continues to grow.

What can I do? Is there another way, a stronger product?

Rodrigo Coutinho Lisbon Portugal

Hello Rodrigo"

Thank you for your email.

Search engines are sending a huge amount of traffic to us at the moment with the similar questions about how to deal with Ivy (Hedera helix).

The RHS International Chelsea Flower Show

Work has started in transforming the 11 acre site at the Royal Hospital into a surreal collection of different gardens on many different themes.

Over the coming weeks over 6,200m of track-way will be laid; the Great Pavilion, an 11,000m structure that 500 buses could park in, will be created; dozens of structures, including nine restaurants, a press tent, which over 1,000 press will utilise, will be built and the BBC will install up to 20 miles of cabling. 

Forty seven show gardens will be created by teams of landscapers and plants-men and on Monday 21 May all the displays will judged by a total of 120 judges, including carnivorous plant and bonsai experts.

Maintaining and servicing your lawn mower

It is never too late to do some mower maintenance and if you did not replace sharpen or balance the mower blades in the spring then I would advise, if you do not want to see unsightly bruising of the leaf blade tips after a cut then you should consider it now.

Bear in mind though that if you have a cylinder mower there could be a wait of a week or two for the workshop to fit you in so it pays to check.

Lifting and dividing woodland plants

As the season rolls on from early spring into late spring it is time to consider lifting, dividing and replanting your woodland and meadow plants.

Some advice sites will tell you to wait until the autumn but Cowslips can be lifted, separated and replanted in new clumps as soon as they have finished flowering.

You will also find that if a clump of cowslips are left for two or three seasons without intervention that they will freely seed. This is great thing because you will extend your crop without any cost.

But lift a few of these year old seedlings to another spot in the wood or semi shaded bank or paddock and you will find it provides a great host to start the free seeding again.

The Lawn Shop

The dry weather has really become a problem for the British gardener and this unprecedented dry spell will surely cause some harm to lawns and gardens.

This is the period that most plants, shrubs and trees put on their best growth and April showers do a great service to produce fresh turgid and chlorophyll packed cells.

The lawn is equally in need of water at this time of year to aid development and recovery but with watering restrictions likely once more most of us will just have to wait and see what happens and assess the damage afterwards.

Tree stump Removal - why it is important

Out of site and out of mind.

This tends to be the message I get from gardeners who have a tree felled and the root ground out using a specialist contractor.

However be very aware that what remains under the soil can be a problem if not dealt with properly.

Garden advice software available on CD-ROM & download

In my bid to make Landscape Juice a respected and sought after site for the landscaping and horticulture industry I am delighted to welcome Neil Bromhall as a guest author.

Neil is accredited with creating Complete Gardens plant selector pruning guide encyclopaedia CD-ROM and he will be launching it's latest 3,500 plant version with over 9,000 photographs at the Chelsea Flower Show Stand East Avenue 30 this coming May.

Neil will also be launching launching Complete Gardens stream download of the 2,700 plant version so that customers can try out the software before deciding to buy the CD-ROM or to licence the software for a year.

Shoot Gardening from Nicola Gammon

Is is not refreshing that the web has become a medium that all can exploit rather than large companies who could monopolise and elbow out any pretenders to the thrown?

Anyone who has a passion or a skill can publish their knowledge and have it immediately available around the world.

One such person who had a dream and aspired to reveal it to the world was Nicola Gammon.

Nicola readily admits that she is not a professional but was inspired to start her website called Shoot Gardening because she wanted someone to remind her when the time was right to do something.

I guess that some websites are rather patronising and this was Nicolas way of finding a way to deliver good advice to other hobbyist and non professional gardeners on her terms and not in a rigid authoritative way.

Gardening Mags and Garden Answers

I am always on the lookout for good content and online resource and I think this one is a real gem.
Check out GardeningMags.co.uk and Garden answers. There are oodles of articles and pictures with tips and advice with plenty of competitions as well.