lavender - common
common lavender or Lavandula angustifolia
Dense spikes of fragrant, pale to deep purple, summer flowers and steely, grey-green foliage. This compact English lavender...
GOES WELL WITH
How to use companion plants
Companion planting is a method of growing different plants adjacent to one another for the benefit of one or both of the companions. Some plants are thought to confuse or act as a decoy to potential pests, while a few provide food for the pest's natural
Read full articleLavenders - aromatic sun-lovers
Aromatic plants produce their own fragrant oil and they use it as a sunscreen to prevent scorching, so anything aromatic or silvery needs full sun. Although drought-tolerant, these plants rely on a deep root system and once established they will never nee
Read full articlePlanting companions for roses
Early flowering roses tend to come in shades of white, pink or purple-pink and most forms of the biennial foxglove, Digitalis purpurea, have toning flowers in similar colours. These appear in rose time, but carry on after the first rose flush has finished
Read full articleEnglish lavenders
When the heat bounces off the ground and almost overwhelms you some plants are revelling in this heat. On scorching days in high summer you won’t have to touch the foliage at all, it will waft through the air providing an aromatherapy session for the gard
Read full articleMake a 'tussie-mussie' or posy of flowers
On the whole, I’m a pretty rugged sort of person. A disproportionate amount of my gardening time seems to be spent hammering scaffold boards together, or powering my way through waist high weeds at the business end of a petrol strimmer, or hauling improba
Read full articleLow maintenance plants for a sunny garden
We all want a lovely garden but sometimes we are too busy with work and family, or we simply don’t have the inclination to garden incessantly, so the trick is to choose low maintenance plants such as easy shrubs and then to underplant them with ground cov
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