Top Tips for Little Green Fingers

Top Tips for Little Green Fingers Gardening is a fantastic hobby. You don’t need to be a plant expert and it really doesn’t need to be a chore, so Jean Vernon, Gardening Correspondent for The Daily Telegraph and Lechuza have come up with some top tips to help you enjoy gardening with little ones! The […]

How to Create a Real Southwest Garden with Marcia Willet

There are an abundance of gardens to visit in the Southwest, each with its own slice of paradise, each neatly arranged, as nature is shaped to entice and lead the eye. However, interestingly when those born in the South West try to recapture their memories of their childhood in their London gardens, these stately homes […]

How to Rear Your Own Turkeys

How to Rear Your Own Turkeys By Martina Mercer A month ago we invested in lavender ducks and chickens for our small holding as although we’d kept hundreds of birds before, we’d had a break of a few years and so wanted to start again small. Instead of the incredible layers of Aylesbury ducks or the […]

How to Encourage Children into the Garden

Encourage Children to Step Outside In this day and age with electricity taken for granted many children choose media as a form of entertainment; whether it’s YouTube, Facebook or gaming online it all burns energy while frazzling brain cells too. Here are some ideas for how to encourage children into the garden and away from […]

Lavender Animals Add Colour to the Garden!

It’s been a busy month at the North Yorkshire Manor House, as we made the decision to stay. Suddenly as the sun came out we were overwhelmed with the beauty of our home and the extortionate outgoings seemed to be worth living in this Moors retreat. Once we made up our mind it was all […]

The Sun has Got his Easter Bonnet On

The Sun has got His Easter Bonnet on! As everyone tucks into their chocolate eggs, and proud children display their handmade bonnets, we’ve realised that a chicken is afforded with a sense of fame at this time of the year. The tiny fluffy craft chicks that adorn each Easter cake litter supermarket shelves making us […]

The Benefits of Bedding Plants

By Martina Mercer I used to avoid bedding plants as much as possible as the annual nature made me believe they were not great value for money. However over the past few years I’ve been converted and now as well as bulbs, herbs and perennials, bedding plants have pride of place in all of my borders. […]

Take a Tip From Tom’s Midnight Garden

Those of you that have been following my Manor House escapades will understand the huge task that faces me on a weekend as I try to bring the gardens back to their former glory. With six feet deep borders of nettles, brambles and poison ivy, it’s easy to become disheartened as I quite simply don’t […]

Home Made Composts for Your Garden (Warning- it’s a bit yucky!)

By Martina Mercer There are many different forms of homemade compost out there, and many ways in which you can take unwanted rubbish and turn it into a fertilizer or compost for your plants. However, which does what, and what compost and fertilizer is best for your plot? Whether you garden on a balcony from a […]

A Realist’s Look at Keeping Livestock

For the majority of us that regularly tend to our vegetable patch or spend our spare minutes in the garden there comes a time when we decide we want to share it with something else. It seems that no sooner have we perfected the lawn and trimmed planted the borders that we feel the need […]