How to dyg

A house in a garden in Dublin, designed and planted by Howbert and Mays: the left photo shows the kitchen window, nestled in a sunny corner with flowering plants.. The right shows a bedroom window loking onto a shady woodland garden and pond.

More and more people live in cities. There is a constant shift in habitation from the countryside to cities and the world now has more urban dwellers than it does rural ones – compared to 3% in 1800 and 14% in 1900. We crossed the 50% mark in 2008.

With the growth of urban culture, urban trees are more important now than they ever have ever been.  Trees in cities and suburbs will play an ever-increasing part in our lives.  It’s not just the big cities either: many of us live in country towns or villages where the view outside the windows and front door is the most important view in the world – or certainly the one we see the most often and over the longest period.

Plane trees (Platanus x acerifolia) in Dublin: Rathgar and Fitzwilliam Square.

The environment for a tree in a city is very different from a more natural rural setting. Water can be hard to access as it is whisked into drains by gutters and hard surfaces. Pollution can build up on leaves and bark. Greater extremes of temperature are likely as heat is stored and reflected off walls and roads. Soil is frequently contaminated with pollutants, chemicals or building materials. Wind can be intense as it is tunneled along streets. And there’s no end of potential for physical damage, either intentional – such as vandalism – or unintentional: bumps from cars, compaction around the roots and so on. In such an environment a tree can outgrow its available space, so it either needs to be able to take pruning or stop growing when it reaches a prescribed size.

You don't want to go to the trouble and expense of planting a new hedge, only to find that it doesn't survive more than a year or two. The last couple of years have been rough on plants in Ireland. Cold winters, wet springs and dry summer winds have left their toll. Plants that have been considered very tough have been killed or knocked back hard. Many gardens the length and breadth of Ireland have lost hedges, including traditional favourites such as Escallonia, Grisellinia and Olearia. What plants should people choose when it comes to hedges or shelter belts?

Know your site. Is it exposed or sheltered, coastal or inland? Is the soil damp and heavy or dry and free-draining? Knowing these things will allow you to make an informed decision. Plants have different requirements and preferences, and there is a plant for every location. Bear in mind that the edges of your site are often more exposed than the inner parts and that hedges create shelter in which you can grow more delicate plants. Choosing carefully will ensure that plants don't just survive but flourish. Read full article...

When rain hits the ground it has to go somewhere. If the ground is hard and impermeable it will flow away quickly. If the ground is permeable it will filter more slowly into the ground. In cities and suburbs a lot of ground is taken up with impermeable surfaces: roofs, roads, paths and car parks. In rural areas many smaller towns and villages have areas of light industrial units, garages and leisure facilities, all with big expanses of hard surfaces.  When taken collectively, gardens and buildings in urban or suburban areas take up a big proportion of the land.

A pond near the house can act as a reservoir for rainwater run-off, acting as a valuable buffer for streams and rivers.

A green house can be a house which is, quite literally, green. Climbing plants on your home - or anywhere else in your garden for that matter - are very useful because they take up little space on the ground but provide masses of greenery elsewhere. One prized-up paving stone can provide enough space for a climber which can cover an entire building. Maintained correctly they cause no damage at all. In fact, climbers on a house can actually buffer it from weather extremes and act as a first line of defence against the elements. See our selection of climbing plants for sale in Ireland...

Ivy (Hedera helix) on a house in Inchicore, Dublin 8.

Choosing the right type of climbing plant for your wall.

Self clinging: There are different types of climbers, and the easiest ones are the ones which are known as 'self clinging'. These climbers don't require any support as they grip onto the wall surface themselves. These climbers are good for most walls but should not be planted onto weak or damaged walls. They need to be clipped once a year to keep them out of gutters and windows.Otherwise they can look after themselves and will work their way over any vertical surface. Good examples of self clinging climbers include Ivy (Hedera), Boston Ivy and Virginia creeper (Parthenocissus) and climbing hydrangea (Hydrangea seemannii and Hydrangea petiolaris).

Long shadows, cooler nights and a final flush of late summer flowers. Our garden is looking great right now - between the showers. Many of the plants here are part of the Nova-flore seed mix - the easiest and most floriferous bit of gardening we have ever done! Three years ago this was an acre of mud and a building site, so growth has been fast and furious. Growing flowers from seed in this way is inexpensive, easy and high impact. The soil needs to be free from weeds at the start of the year and then simply raked into the ground and firmed in. People should not confuse this with 'wild' flowers. 'Wild' flowers is an ambiguous term as most plants are wild - somewhere. Generally, and in the Irish context, 'wild' flowers refers to native flowers. These flowers grow somewhat as if they were wild - knotted together in an informal way - but are from various parts of the world.

One packet of the Nove-flore seed mix covers approximately thirty square metres. Each square metre is packed with literally hundreds of plants, allowing for a succession of blooms from early in the summer right up through October. The mix shown here is 'Passion' which is an annual mix, so we will cut this down in late winter (ie February - March), dig over the soil and sow a new mix. We'll leave it up over the winter, even if it looks untidy, as the various seed-heads will provide food for wild birds. We might also collect some seeds by cutting stems and hanging them over a paper bag. This is the easiest way to collect flower seeds.

Dill - again, part of the Nove-flore seed mix..... very popular with the hover flies.

Many Irish people have a second home – a holiday home for their own use or to rent out. The Irish landscape – if we’re honest about it – is in some areas ruined by their sheer number and the poor quality of siting and design.  Some counties – Cork being a good example – have higher planning standards than others, and have produced a set of guidelines, as well a guide to the siting of houses in the landscape.

From a garden design point of view, it’s all the harder to make anything attractive when the house, and its position in the landscape, is so insensitive. The architecture – or the lack of it, to be more precise – can be hard to work with, and the best thing that can be done for some holiday homes is to shroud them as much as possible. A lot of people want a very open view, and this is a shame, because views are generally much better when framed or glimpsed, rather than ‘in your face’ and totally open. There’s many a house that sits in the middle of its empty site: it may a great view, but it has ruined the view for everyone else

The last couple of years have not been easy on Irish gardens. Plants that have grown happily for the last few decades were killed by the cold, crushed by the snow or had their leaves burned off in late spring storms. People are now more aware than ever that when choosing plants for their garden, hardiness is an important issue. And rightly so - nothing is more depressing than seeing plants die.

Ireland is generally described as having a 'mild' climate, but the last couple of winters have disproved this, with temperatures staying as low as -15 degrees centigrade over several days. On top of that, we have had sporadic bursts of cold, or cold drying winds later in the year, just when new leaves were emerging. Generally tough plants such as Olearia, Escallonia, Cordyline and Griselinia were either killed or severly knocked back this year. Even Fuchsia, a Chilean plant which is by now a staple of many Irish hedgerows, was brought down to ground level - and in some places killed entirely.

A mown path through an orchard at Innisbeg near Baltmore in West Cork.

Everyone is talking about cutbacks these days. Luckily, there is one thing that we can cut back on in the garden which has no nasty side effects, and that's mowing. Many people would agree that there is nothing as nice as a well maintained lawn. On the other hand, do we need quite so much of it?

Many gardens in the countryside comprise of a house, a parking area, some plants around it, a big lawn and perhaps a hedge or some trees. It can mean a lot of mowing and a rather boring garden. The shape of the garden is frequently square or rectangular, and the walls or hedges at the boundary can seem domineering, hard and at odds with the more curvaceous countryside around them.

From online to real-life! June 2nd - June 6th in the Phoenix Park - we were there!
We are the Proud Winners for best stall at Bloom from Hortitrends. Hortitrends is an Irish company which specialises in the online and offline markeing of companies in the Horticulture, Landscape and Fresh Produce sectors.

It was swelteringly hot and crowded, and we were right in the thick of it. We were happy to meet existing customers and to find out from others what they were looking for and couldn't find.... we'll have all sorts of new items on the site soon in response to what we learned. There is plainly a need for high quality gardening tools that people know will last, and the Chillington hoes sold out almost completely in the first couple of days. Other good sellers were kitchen compost pails, bird houses, deck chairs, spiral plant supports and of course plants. The 'Composphere' compost tumbler was a great curiousity. Plant-wise, we brought in just a tiny selection of what we sell. Most popular were the giant-leaved Rhododendrons, Rhododendron sinogrande and Rhododendron macabeanum, both of which look great at this time of year. Primula viallii, which we had potted up in a large pot, was by far our best-selling perennial - and one of the most unusual and eye-catching primulas.

Our stand at Bloom with the Composphere in the foreground.