Landscape Juice

Free iPhone app to help navigate Gardeners' World Live

The BBC has launched a free App for visitors attending this year’s BBC Gardeners’ World Live.

The App will allow the 105,000 expected visitors to access information about the show, which take place at The NEC from 15-19 June 2011.

This is the first time visitors are being offered information on their iPhones and iPads, and using GPS and WiFI, it will help them to navigate all aspects of the show.

The App provides everything needed whilst on-site at The NEC; from local traffic advice to where to go for lunch, as well as being a handy tool to help users navigate around and gather exhibitor information on the move.

BBC Greenacre garden abandoned

There's a serene calm come over all of the BBC Gardeners' World viewers since the start of the new series and return of head gardener, Monty Don.

Viewing numbers are on the rise and we're getting back to the main topic, gardening and not gimmickry.

Don't you think Monty's garden is looking rather loved and spic'n'span? He cannot possible look after it all himself.

Melissa Jolly's salad bar recipes

Here are some recipes from garden designer Melissa Jolly's award winning salad bar garden which you might have missed at Gardeners' World Live, writes Carol Miers.

"I wanted to find a recipe that used strawberries and rosemary as I had planted these amongst each other in one of the beds," Melissa said.

"I came across this delicious sounding recipe on a blog by Jugalbandi."

Recipe to make Baked strawberries with lavendar and rosemary.

Melissa Jolly's flowing garden designs

Melissa Jolly's first show garden was one of three winners of the N S & I's Growing Gardens Today competition.

Her Salad Bar garden was then chosen by BBC2 Gardeners' World live to be filmed in the making. Then the viewers and visitors rewarded it with the Visitor vote 2010 and the RHS judges awarded a silver medal.

The countdown to Monty Don's return to Gardeners' World

I heard Monty Don talking in a trailer for this Friday's Gardeners' World and I'm sorry if I sound like a sycophant but just hearing him speak confirms to me - not that it really needed confirmation - the BBC have made the right decision.

The new (old) format of bringing the viewer in to the presenter's garden is bang on too - Monty's been gardening there for 20 years. Whilst Monty has his detractors, I feel the BBC will re-win previous Gardeners' World friends with this move.

The first programme shows how to lift and divide snowdrops and introduces us to some new varieties of hellebores. Monty also gets his vegetable garden started by sowing beetroot and rocket, as well as planting onions - watch out for tips on apple tree pruning too.

Monty Don, why we need worked woodlands

coppicing n. The Oxford Dictionary: An area of woodland in which the trees or shrubs are periodically cut back to ground level to stimulate growth and provide firewood or timber.

Monty Don, soon to be presenting Gardeners' World, gave a powerful interview to the Guardian where he explained why a coppiced and worked woodland is a vital and precious cultural habitat. That said, he added, who owns it is secondary.

Monty Don talks about his 'surprise' return to Gardeners' World

Monty Don - who the BBC last week announced was returning to Gardeners' world as head gardener - today talks about his complete 'surprise' after being invited back to the role he worked in for five years before his stroke in 2008.

Writing in his Daily Mail column, Monty Don mentions he was only asked come back recently but when the call came, he said: "so when this opportunity arose just a few weeks ago — and, I confess, took me completely by surprise — I embraced it."

It is one of the clearest hints that the BBC could take no more, after viewers and bloggers ripped into the disastrous Top Gear'esque format and the frigid Greenacre venue.

Monty Don returns to BBC Gardeners' World

The BBC has announced, that popular TV gardener Monty Don, will return as the lead presenter of the long running Gardeners' World.

In a move that will please the long suffering Gardeners' World viewers, the show will leave unpopular Greenacre and instead be filmed at Monty Don's own garden in Herefordshire: something the Gardeners' World presenter has done since the days of Percy Thrower.

Toby Buckland and Alys Fowler will move on but Joe Swift and Carol Klein are expected to stay on and Rachel De Thame will return too.

Toby Buckland rejoins Amateur Gardening

BBC Gardeners' World presenter Toby Buckland is rejoining the Amateur Gardening magazine.

As of the 26 June issue (out this Saturday, 19 June), Toby will become one of the magazine's weekly columnists, sharing tales from his home garden and allotment in Devon.

Toby, a professional nurseryman, was Amateur Gardening's Grow, Cook and Eat writer before
leaving in autumn 2008 to present Gardeners' World.

Amateur Gardening has had a long history of Gardeners' World presenters writing for the magazine including Percy Thrower, Peter Seabrook, Stefan Buczacki, Arthur Billitt, Alan Titchmarsh and Monty Don.

Are the BBC to close the Gardeners' World website?

The BBC have hinted that the Gardeners' World website will be axed and part of its cost cutting and restructuring, announced this week.

BBC 6 Music and Asian Network are facing closure: Mark Thompson told BBC staff that half of the Corporation's websites will be shut down by 2013.