Plants
Plants, how to plant, what to plant
The best flowers to plant for a beautiful spring garden to lift your spirits
Looking for inspiration for the best spring flowers? Here's our choice of the most beautiful spring flowers to have in a spring-fuelled garden
It's almost time to divide your snowdrops so you have a beautiful carpet next year. Here's an easy way to get more snowdrops for free
All you need to know about growing snowdrops, including when to plant snowdrops and how to care for them
It's nearly time to plant summer flowering bulbs - here's our guide on exactly when to plant them and which to grow
Spring is the ideal time to plant summer-flowering bulbs. We asked four experts to recommend their favourites
How to care for your teak garden furniture
If you already have teak garden furniture, or you are considering buying teak for your outdoor space, here’s how to look after this attractive hardwood
50 invaluable plants for the garden as chosen by a royal garden designer
Landscape designer Jinny Blom picks the 50 plants she loves the most, from first loves, to flowers great for a pot
What's new?
Planting and caring for daffodils for a spring garden plus the most lovely varieties to grow
Expert grower Hannah Gardner gives advice on planting narcissi in borders, pots and lawns and recommends the 10 best narcissi to grow
Want a beautiful bulb meadow on your lawn? Here's our expert planting plan for creating a simple and stunning display
Find out how to plant a bulb meadow in your lawn that will look stunning from February to May, with advice from a bulb expert.
March flowers that will look great right now: the best plants for the garden this month
Plantswoman Fleur van Zonneveld chooses ten plants that help brighten the lengthening days of March. Photos by Maayke De Ridder
What to plant in March for beautiful blooms and tasty veg over the summer and beyond
Head gardener Benjamin Pope and grower and writer Aaron Bertelsen offer their suggestions for the best things to plant in pots and beyond this month
Bring blooms, colour and scent to your garden right now with the expert’s pick of exquisite early flowering shrubs
Flowering shrubs bring much needed colour and scent to the garden in late winter and early spring. Expert Tony Kirkham selects the best.
Autumn
54 brilliant purple flowers for the garden
Discover 55 of the most beautiful purple flowering plants for the garden, chosen by expert horticulturalists and growers
Feed the birds: these are the best plants for birds that you can have in your garden
Making your garden a safe haven for birds is easy and rewarding says Jane Moore, author of Planting for Garden Birds.
A well-behaved alternative to bamboo, these grass-like evergreens are great year-round
Defying easy categorisation, restios are evergreen plants that offer eye-catching details, attractive stems and grow rapidly in spring
Bulbs
These teeny tiny daffodils are a spring delight - here's how to grow and plant them for cuteness overload
From her small nursery in a North Yorkshire back garden, Anne Wright grows the most exquisite tiny narcissi. She gives her expert advice on how to plant and care for these miniature daffodils.
Everything you need to know about crocus
Crocuses bring welcome pops of colour to the garden in late winter and early spring. Richard Wilford from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew gives his advice on growing them and recommends the best varieties.
Crocuses or croci: what is the plural of crocus?
Is the correct term for the plural of crocus crocuses or croci? Here's what we found out
Flowers
Easy to grow and care for – why you need to grow heuchera for year-round colour
With their striking foliage in a range of bold colours, heucheras, and the associated heucherellas and tiarellas, are low-maintenance plants that offer year-round colour.
You don't find poppies and cornflowers in a real meadow - here's why they are so rare and what a meadow actually is
A brief history of the evolution of the meadow, from the last ice age
until the present day – and why poppies and corncockle do not a meadow make…
Three expert gardeners reveal their favourite places to buy seeds
Three expert gardeners pick their favourite seed catalogues and online plant lists that are also an enjoyable and informative read
House plants
How to propagate houseplants - an easy and cheap guide to growing your houseplant collection
Expert house growers Maddie and Alice Bailey explain how to propagate your houseplants using stem cuttings
How to repot your plants - watch our guide to repotting houseplants to make sure your indoor plants are happy
Our simple and easy-to-follow guide on how and when to repot your houseplants from experts Alice and Maddie Bailey from Forest London
The surprising ways the scammers of the plant world swindle unsuspecting pollinators (spoiler: it's sex... or a fight)
There are plants which use deception to get what they want: discover these remarkable plants that go to extreme lengths to trick pollinators to visit them
Planting ideas
Get inspiration for your garden and discover which plants will work best and where
How to make your own plant supports and protection that are easy, cheap and full of charm
Ideas for homemade plant supports using natural materials, to give plants support and protection during the growing season.
Colour | Red flowers for the garden
Designing your planting layout with colour is a satisfying way of creating your garden. Here's a selection of red plants, chosen by experts, that we love
Forget snowdrops: these are the best early spring flowers to bring sunny colour to your garden
Bring bright, sunny colour to your late-winter garden with the earliest flowers of the year, which will spread to create golden carpets under trees.
Pots
Spring beauty in a pot: a stunning plant pot design you can plant up at home from designer Jo Thompson
Award-winning designer Jo Thompson's container-planting series continues with this early spring flower combination using Narcissus and Scilla. Words Jo Thompson, photographs Jason Ingram
Give your containers autumn style with the help of designer Jo Thompson's hellebore and euonymus designs
Designer Jo Thompson creates this stylish display using hellebores and euonymus to see you through the colder months
A great planted pot for winter and autumn using succulents with architectural texture
Designer Jo Thompson creates a stylish display to see you through the colder months using aloe and other succulents
Shrubs
How to prune wisteria
Wisteria needs to be pruned twice a year to keep it in good shape and to ensure abundant flowers. Here's how to do it.
Great flowers and plants for the garden in December picked by head gardeners
The best December flowers and foliage from winter interest plants chosen for structure, colour and texture in the garden. Photographs Jason Ingram
Alternatives to a Christmas tree
Looking for an alternative to a cut Christmas tree? Here are some attractive conifers that you can grow outdoors in pots all year round, then bring indoors for the festive season
Spring
It feels like spring, but it's not here yet - discover when spring *actually* starts
When spring starts is different depending on which calendar you're looking at. Here we answer the question what is the first day of spring in 2025?
The search for the Backhouse daffodils: a remarkable plant treasure hunt
Tracking down the Backhouse daffodils, narcissi bred by her ancestors, has become a lifetime’s work for Caroline Thomson.
Best places to propose: pop the question in a garden
Thinking of proposing to your beloved? Why not do it in style and pull off the perfect marriage proposal in one of our pick of beautiful garden venues
Summer
In praise of the chrysanthemum
Discover exactly how to grow these late-flowering hardy chrysanthemums that will look perfect in your garden. Photographs by Jason Ingram
These colourful stems will be a great addition to your winter garden
Cultivars of Cornus sanguinea, Cornus alba and Cornus sericea are grown for their colourful winter stems, but some have the benefit of attractive foliage too, giving them year-round appeal. Plant expert Andy McIndoe recommends some of the best.
The best fuchsias for your garden
Hardy fuchsias can flower from late spring right through to early autumn. Mat Reese, head gardener at Malverleys in Hampshire, recommends his favourites and gives advice on growing them
Trees
How to coppice hazel
Our guide on how to coppice and cut back hazel for lovely hazel stems and to keep your hazel plants healthy
Cutting certain plants right back is necessary for their health, even if it looks drastic - here's how to do it right and when
Discover when you need to coppice shrubs and trees to encourage bright new stems and foliage.
Trees and shrubs to plant for birds
Discover some of the best shrubs to plant in your garden for birds, chosen by Isabel Losada
Winter
You do need to prune dogwoods, but you don't need to do it every year - here's our expert guide on how to prune your winter stems
Learn how to prune dogwood to ensure that it produces plenty of colourful stems for winter.
The English country town where everyone goes completely snowdrop mad each February
The annual Shepton Mallet Snowdrop Festival in Somerset is the place to be for galanthophiles in February.
Plants for February
Keith Wiley of Wildside in Devon and Jimi Blake of Huntingbrook Gardens choose some early flowering bulbs and sweetly scented shrubs for February, to help welcome the return of spring.