Advice & Inspiration For Your Garden

spring flower arrangements

In early spring our yearning for those intense green, newly emergent leaves on the trees – and the carpets of primroses, wood anemones and celandines covering the ground below them – grows by the day.

cosmos summer flower arrangement

In this video, Sarah shows you how to put together a lovely roadside-inspired Cosmos 'Purity' flower arrangement.By viewing the video, you agree to a data transmission to Youtube.The data processing b

top tips for picking and arranging roses

Roses make beautiful cut flowers but it helps to know some basics on how to pick them and advice on arranging roses for the best effect.Picking rosesThe trick with roses is to pick them early in the m

british cut flowers

Did you know that the retail value of the cut flower industry in Britain is worth over two billion pounds? That’s the same as the UK music industry, yet only 10% of those flowers are British grown, co

amaryllis flowers for the christmas table

Amaryllis flowers are perfect for Christmas with their rich colours and eyecatching style. Amaryllis flowers will transform a room in an instant. Here I will show you how to arrange them.Amaryllis hav

a unique christmas flower table arrangement

upper level display I'm starting off with some thin-necked, silvered glass bottles, but any tall, narrow bottle or vase would do. These, filled with white wax flower and the odd branch of silver b

a simple table centrepiece

If you have plenty of rosemary in the garden you can use it to cover drinking tumblers for the table centres in the marquee. Covering a tumbler or medium-sized jam jar (Bonne Maman French jam jars a

how to freeze flowers

I like freezing the small edible flowers – anchusas, borage, pansies and violas – in ice or olive oil cubes. Make up different shapes, with some stars as well as rectangles. I know it's going

narcissus paperwhite table centrepiece

This is the most successful, long-lived Christmas table centre I have ever made: a great tiered fountain of scented Paperwhite narcissi. Kept cool in my greenhouse, it looked good for nearly a month.M

how to make a hand-tied bunch

Sarah shows us how to make a hand tied bouquet of flowers - using home-grown flowers from her cutting patch at Perch Hill Farm.Before you start, lay out all your conditioned flowers and foliage in the

decorating for christmas with paperwhite narcissi

How do you fancy an incredibly beautiful, long lasting, deliciously scented and spectacular table centre which will be at its best over Christmas and New Year? You can make it little or large, and tha

how to make a christmas wreath

Go on a forage and see what’s still looking good outside, picking anything colourful and decorative to add to your wreath, such as brilliant-pink spindle berries, agapanthus seed heads, orange C

chrysanthemums as cut flowers

It's now five weeks since I returned from Holland with a box of cut chrysanthemums and this morning I threw the last one away. That's an incredible vase life – five weeks in a dark, warm house and s

how to make your own calendula cream

This calendula cream recipe is wonderfully soothing and healing, perfect for bruises, burns, irritations and open wounds. It works by helping the small capillaries to grow around the wound, enab

the basics of arranging cut flowers

How should I treat stems – bash, burn, or sear? Anything that looks floppy should have its stem ends seared in boiling water for 30 seconds. Give woody stems a bit longer – so bluebells only 10

What to do with your allium seedheads

In this video, Sarah shows you her favourite varieties of alliums for drying, ready for spraying for Christmas decorations.Alliums are really wonderful in May in this garden - this is the Oast Garden