Hi I’m Kath and I am Harlow Carr Garden’s latest recruit. I work on the ornamental team ‘Gardens West’ and my permanent contract has just begun on the 1 st October. This is very exciting for me as I have worked for many years in the chocolate industry. Eventually, after doing 4 years at evening classes... Read more..

Hi I’m Kath and I am Harlow Carr Garden’s latest recruit. I work on the ornamental team ‘Gardens West’ and my permanent contract has just begun on the 1 st October. This is very exciting for me as I have worked for many years in the chocolate industry. Eventually, after doing 4 years at evening classes... Read more..

Well, it’s certainly a soggy end to the week today…the mowers have been put away and we are catching up on our cuttings of our salvias and pricking out scores of seedlings under cover! Busy week….there are not enough hours in the day at the moment to keep on top of the weeds springing up with the recent... Read more..

Some of the grounds at Down's Park School in Portslade by Sea consist of a sloping site with thin soil over chalk. The school thought it would be a nice addition to the grounds to create a wildflower meadow and this is the project we have been working on in the past half term. The pupils spent alot... Read more..

"That which does not kill us, makes us stronger". Hmmm. I don't think that Nietzsche bloke was a gardener. If he was, he was sorely misled on the subject of climbing beans. You see the late frost this year, which did not quite kill them, has made them, not so much stronger as pathetic shadows... Read more..

"Please don't walk on Mummy's head, darling!" When I uttered these pained words I realised my weekend was not going well. A husband away for a stag weekend in Amsterdam, a streaming cold and the need to entertain three hyperactive children does not make for a good combination. At this... Read more..

Any takers for adding a caption?! Here's Judi and myself with the bamboo frames used to mark out the new wildflower area. Maybe the pressure was getting to us a little. For those of you that haven't sown wildflowers before, here are some steps; 1. Prepare the ground by removing all weeds and... Read more..

Calling all entomologists out there - we need your help identifying this little guy above. We're pretty certain it's a bush cricket nymph (one of the early instars) but they're not so easy to determine at this stage. If you think you might know, drop us a comment. As well as spotting crickets... Read more..

Visitors to Wisley enjoying Plants for Bugs in the sunshine Last Thursday the sun finally shone through for us. In fact, it was so hot we had to keep dipping under the trees to cool down in the shade. But the reality is that this near non-stop rain has turned our newly sown wildflower area next to Plants... Read more..

If I didn't know better, I'd have said some prankster had been down on our new wildflower area and thrown handfuls of cooked spaghetti over some plants (see pic above). But no, this was nature at its wierdest. What we had was a couple of patches of dodder - yellow dodder to be precise ( Cuscuta... Read more..