With spring upon us, the kids at Carrots Cottage are rearing to get outside. Woolly jumpers are being replaced with summer shorts and the snow and hail is finally beginning to clear.

Although many of us prefer to have the kid’s outdoors in the fresh air, it is sometimes hard to prise them away from the football, trampoline and other toys scattered on the lawn. We’ve therefore made a pact to ourselves – this season we’ll let them help with the gardening. A number of these outdoor activities even pack a learning punch. Teaching the children about nutrition, where the vegetables in their lunches and dinners come from and how to size up rows and plot measurements are all important skills we’ll be encouraging.

Our garden is currently a little on the neglected side; there are a few weeds here and there and the birdhouse is in dire need of a lick of paint. With so much to do in the garden, we decided spring would be the best time to start! Even known firms like McCarthy & Stone are currently working on their gardens now – creating one which celebrates later life in their Retirement Housing – so we thought we’d take inspiration from their lead and create one that celebrates youth and childhood.

How to maintain interest
Of course, deciding to get the kids involved was one thing. Actually getting them to ake part was another entirely. Thankfully, there are a few easy ways to maintain interest and here are the top suggestions.

Attract visitors
As a general rule, kids love animals. Attracting visitors was therefore first on the agenda and was achieved through a quick birdhouse renovation. Something kids of all ages can take part in, the wooden structure was given a thorough clean and a quick coat of bright paint. Letting the kids choose the colour and get to work painting proved a huge hit and we even let them decorate it with colourful pictures for extra intrigue. Filling it with fresh nesting material and food completed the task.

Own your own plant
Next we moved on to the potted plants, all of which appear to have disappeared into thin air. Attracting a child’s attention here is relatively easy (what child doesn’t like getting their hands dirty?) but having them do a good job was more of a challenge. Giving each child their own pot and a batch of sunflower seeds was the solution. Allowing them to own their own plant made them more likely to give it the time and attention it deserved and with a little healthy competition thrown in they’re all waiting to see who will grow the tallest sunflower.

Turn it into a lesson
Children are often fascinated by worms and insects so why not use this interest to help them learn? A worm farm is easy to create and can be used to get rid of your old vegetable scraps in an eco-friendly way. There are a number of helpful video tutorials online so if you fancy having a go then everything you need is right at your fingertips.

We need your pictures on gardening, plants, wildlife, country cookery, landscape and scenery with our content expanding on the GardenAdvice.co.uk and MyGardenTeam.com web sites we always need fresh exciting pictures to go with our articles. So if you are a keen amateur photographer then send us your pictures on the following subjects

* Gardening – general garden pictures of gardens both large and small
* Plants – if you have an interesting picture of a plant common or rare then send it to us.
* Wildlife – birds and animals related to gardening
* Country cooking – for a section we are launching later this year on cooking the food you produce.
* Landscape and scenery – we have viewers all over the world that love to see different landscapes and scenery

For every picture we accept from you we will credit you with £3.25 up to a maximum of £250 to be used in our MyGardenTeam plant swap service to be used in exchange for plants from the end of September 2013 onwards for 24 months or you can use the credit to a full MyGardenTeam membership. For further details click here
The pictures we accept from you will be used on our GardenAdvice web sites, Facebook and twitter feeds. Where you have your own web site we will also provide a link to your web site.
In addition if we request use of your picture or pictures in one of our books or magazines we will contact you to separately to purchase the rights to publish your pictures in these publications.

To Send us your pictures please make sure each picture file is no bigger than 2MB and remember to keep the original picture files.
Email them to admin@gardenadvice.co.uk as an attachment with a brief description a maximum of 10 pictures per email
You will be emailed back within 72 hours informing you which pictures we wish to accept once we have accepted 10 pictures you will be issued with a special photography project MyGardenTeam online account free of charge to keep track of your pictures and your MyGardenTeam credit.

Watch out for our Photography competitions lauching soon

The British trust of ornithology reports that this years nesting activity has for many species of birds been held back by the coldest April in 24 years but May has brought some sunnier days. Nest Box Challenge participants are now reporting the first Blue and Great Tit hatchlings and Robin chicks fledging.
The cold conditions that delayed many of our summer visitors also affected our resident birds, and many are now just at the beginning of their breeding season.
With the continued cold conditions this spring its helpful to keep feeding your garden birds and make suitability safe nesting site by adding nesting boxes in your garden for different species of birds. Providing additional food in your garden for birds especially such foods as meal worms with greatly increase the birds chances of raising a batch of young birds. Remember the more birds in your garden the less pests as the birds are getting up early to eat your pests such as green fly and slugs

A Quick Guide to the 2103 RHS Chelsea Flower Show from the GardenAdvice Team

Next week sees the start of the RHS Chelsea Flower show on 21st May until the 25th May. Without doubt this annual event created by the Royal Horticultural Society is the best known and most spectacular event in the gardening season and over recent years has also become a key social event in the London calendar.

Its a full day’s visit and its best if possible to visit over two days to be able to take in all the different sections that go together to make the show. The Key section of the show is a number of different types of gardens created within the show. This year as well as the show gardens included is Artisan gardens for Artisan garden designers where they must make artistic use of materials. Fresh gardens where Gardens designers have been asked to think outside the box as the brief for these gardens. Generation gardens designed and created to demonstrate different ways to use a modest-sized front garden plot.  In many cases the show gardens are the result of a year planning and preparation by the gardens designers and creators in a quest to be awarded an RHS medal which is a recognition of a designers and gardens skill in a number of different disciplines such as garden design, plantsmanship and the craft of creating a garden.

Although the show gardens are alone worth the price of the ticket,  greater rewards await the shows visitor by taking the time to delve deeper into the show and its participants.  Lots of new and innovative products are launched at the RHS Chelsea Flower show often by small businesses risking a year or mores marketing budget on this one big chance to impress the public.  But without doubt the the real gems of the show are the smaller specialist nurseries many of which have been coming to the show for years since Victorian times. Often the skill they display in the plants they have grown and the displays they have created is astounding. Among this years must visit nurseries are

Hillier Nurseries Ltd  Specialises in: Trees, shrubs, climbers & herbaceous plants. Hillier are specialist plantsmen, helping gardeners to achieve the best in their gardens, in other words avoiding the risk of failure. Through years of experience, expertise and knowledge Hillier can guide the gardener in his or her choice of plants to overcome the risk of the weather, of climate change or simply misguided decision. Most importantly, Risk is the title of Hillier’s creative Chelsea exhibit, which makes use of adventurous colour and texture combinations; Hillier is well-known for its use of these at Chelsea. Sculpture, water and surfaces will work to emphasise the theme of risk, but underline how it can lead to success when you know how to employ it.

Kevock Garden Plants  Specialises in: Alpine, bog & woodland plant. Kevock Garden Plants are showing alpine, bog and woodland plants with an exceptionally large range of material. On the rocky areas there are celmisias, cascading saxifrages and zaluskianskyas, while on the lower slopes there are the vivid blues of Meconopsis surrounded by lush ferns, punctuated by Dactylorhiza and Arisaema. Numerous Primula, many of them very rare, indicate the damper areas, along with Trollius and miniature Aruncus. Kevock hope to leave show visitors feeling that they have experienced a glimpse of the mountains and their treasures.

Kelways  Specialises in: Peonies & irises. Kelways are the only regular exhibitor of peonies, tree peonies and irises at RHS shows and have some of the most spectacular displays

If you are visiting the show then some planning its a good idea.

Getting to the show – the best way to get to the show is by tube ( the Underground ) to Chelsea Embankment

Leaving the show – Again leaving by tube unless you plan to do a lot of shopping then pre book a taxi and arrange a price the day before.

The weather – Its the British summer its going to rain at the show at least for one day so plan for rain and remember it can and will get muddy so wear sensible shoes.

Where to stay – London has a number of place to stay within easy reach of the show. However we always recommend our own visitors and clients when staying in London to use the Holiday Inn Group hotels. They are reasonably priced, always clean and are staffed with friendly helpful staff. Here are some links to our recommended hotels within easy reach of the RHS Chelsea flower show

HI London Kensington Forum

HI London Bloomsbury

HI London Regents Park

HI London Brent Cross

HI London Mayfair

The weather has finally turned, the winter snows have melted away, wildflowers are beginning to bloom and the leaves are returning to the trees. All this is great news for a Britain’s army of gardeners who have had to batten down the hatches this year for much longer than usual. As a consequence many gardening enthusiasts are way behind in their preparations for the growing season. Seeds have not been sown, soil has not been turned and the day to day gardening jobs that we all love to indulge in just have not been done. So what is the solution? A greenhouse can really broaden your horticultural experience.

A greenhouse allows you to indulge your fantasies all year round, in an efficient, eco-friendly way. Cheshire based Gabriel Ash have created a range of bespoke greenhouses and planthouses that suit your needs and your environment.

Gabriel Ash has become a byword for practicality and flexibility. Crafted from the finest Western Red Cedar and discreet aluminium, a Gabriel Ash greenhouse or planthouse is the ideal setting to grow those tropical fruits or exotic flowers that you have always dreamt about.

Western Red Cedar is renowned for being naturally resistant to rot and termites, and is incredibly strong and stable. These aren’t greenhouses that will fall apart, or start looking shabby after a number of years. These greenhouses are an investment for the future of your garden and your home.

Gabriel Ash is the only greenhouse company to have their entire range fully endorsed by the Royal Horticultural Society which is testament to the quality and care that Gabriel Ash’s range of greenhouses possess. Robin Parker, Head of Sales at Gabriel Ash is extremely proud of this fact;

“To have the Royal Horticultural Society describe our greenhouses as the best on the market is an incredible honour. They are the most respected horticultural association in the country, with a tradition dating back to the early 1800’s. We share a collective vision for gardening excellence, and this is reflected in their endorsement of our products.”

A Gabriel Ash greenhouse or planthouse will genuinely revolutionise your gardening approach – the ideal space for cultivation and propagation, all year round. Request a brochure today.

If you you have an ongoing garden project or have just finish having a garden built or finished developing one yourself. Then  your thoughts will be turning to a long hot summer maybe, if we are lucky in which case its time to start thinking about garden furniture. A number of styles of wooden garden furniture are available on the market available from garden centres to DIY shops at a range of prices.
Good wooden garden furniture can add a touch of style to your garden especially if its well made furniture with a good quality softwood or a hardwood such as Oak or teak. A good supplier is also key as they can provide good advice  on which furniture to select and how to care for it to get the best use out of your wooden garden furniture. Then choosing garden Wooden garden furniture a good indicator to look for is the joints in the chairs and tables, the better the joint the better the furniture and the longer it will last. If its a hardwood its also a good idea to treat it with a teak oil of similar to replace all the natural oils the garden furniture looses throughout the extremes of the winter and the summer.

Plant swapping has always been part of gardening, swapping plants from your garden with friends,neighbours and family. In a lots of ways plant swapping is what gardening is all about learning about plants and the environment in general and exchanging knowledge with your fellow gardeners.  The practice of plant swapping goes way back to the start of gardening and records show that great gardeners and renowned scientists such as Joseph Hooker and Charles Darwin often swapped plants they had discovered to increase their own collections. In the Victoria times plant swapping was at it height with many Victorians being keen collectors of plants such as ferns and African violets that were easy to propagate and swap with friends.

One of the best examples of the results of plant swapping is the traditional English cottage garden, almost impossible to design because of the random nature of the planting, the best cottage gardens are often created by the creator of the garden swapping plants, cuttings and seeds with neighbours plus friends that live in the same area. The benefit being that they have access to plant that have a good chance of thriving in your local condition because the plants gained  through swapping have come from a very local source normally grown on the same type of soil.

The random nature of cottage gardens often comes from the nature of swapping plants, if you swap a plant with a friend you are have to find some space in your garden for the plant to grow so that on your friends next visit you can show you skill as a gardener. This random and unplanned supply of plants leads to the typical cottage garden look of the quintessential English cottage garden with a good number of classical cottage garden plants lend themselves to being swapped in this way such as pinks,crocosmia, hollyhocks and delphiniums.

As people have less free time now than in the Victorian period and become less connected with friends and neighbors locally over the last 20 years plant swapping took a downturn but now with the Internet and greater access to information and messaging with such services as twitter and facebook plant swapping is on the up turn showing a resurgence in it popularity. There are now a number of web sites now focusing on making plant swapping more of a national practice rather than just a local activity making it possible to swap and trade plant all over the UK. One such site we recently looked at is www.greenplantswap.co.uk  - recently launched it enables you by membership to swap, trade and buy plants from gardeners both large and small – the larger one often being nurseries. Its easy to use and although only recently launched already contains a wide selection of plants.  Our conclusion is greenplantswap.co.uk is well worth a look especially if you are starting a garden from scratch without much knowledge membership to www.greenplantswap.co.uk  will gain you access to a whole range of plants that come with a lot of knowledge from the people you are swapping with – the people that have grown them and thats what you do not get when obtaining plants from a DIY super store or most garden centres.

Japanese knotweed originally introduced into the UK by the victorians to help stabilize the banks of the water features, ponds. lakes and in some cases canals. It was an ideal plant because it established quickly and formed a root system that could hold together even the steepest of soil banks especially where the banks met  the water as the root will happily grow underwater. Japanese knotweed was a fantastic solution to the victorian landscapers and with a number of projects in the UK within a very short space of time had strongholds throughout the UK being transported around to different locations nationwide as it was used in different landscaping schemes.Then in the late nineties as composting became popular and councils starting to compost large amounts of green material Japanese knotweed increased its hold on the UK spreading further with its seeds often being contained in the compost.

Now Japanese knotweed is a notifiable and controllable weed which is you find any on your land or garden you have a legal obligation to control and eradicate it. Thats not as easy as it sounds

Knotweed or Japanese knotweed is quite a difficult weed to control and requires some time to be able to control it effectively. If you have lots of japanese knotweed you will need to consider a specialist company for the Japanese knotweed removal.  If you only have a small amount one of the best way to kill it is by spraying it with RoundUp weed killer.

RoundUp contains Glyphosate which is a systemic herbicide that acts by blocking a plant’s enzyme system. The herbicide is absorbed through growing leaves and stems where it is translocated throughout the plant and root network. It kills virtually all annual and perennial weeds including grasses. Glyphosate is quickly broken down in soil or sediment and is harmless to animal life. It might take several applications, but it will work.

This is best carried out in the spring or when the plant is actively growing, just as the new shoots start to grow. Apply in dry weather that lasts for 12 hours.

A number of applications will be required over a 6 month period.

Another method which is very effective if you have the time is to cover the area affected with knotweed with black plastic or old carpet, treating the shoots as they appear around the edges. This can take up to 12 months but for example if you are renovating a house and planning to move on the garden later it can be quite useful.

The first home based conservatories were based on the victorian lean to glasshouse attached to a house or shed. Created from simple horticultural glass these first conservatories provided additional space for outdoor living by extending the spring and autumn seasons. In early spring when the sun becomes stronger but its still too cold to sit outside and in the later autumn as the outside temperature drops in the evening early conservatories provided a place to sit and chat with friends and family over a cup of tea.

These first conservatories were suited to growing such plants as aspidistra and ferns which could survive over the winter with the heat from the house walls. Today however with advances in glass technologies and roof blinds conservatories have now become a place both you and your plants can live all year around in comfort especially with some heating.  If you are considering installing a conservatory its best to get some expert advice such as  a specialist selling and installing conservatories Preston, Lanchashire we came across resently

With regards to plants modern conservatories open up a range of possible plants that you can grow from a few indoor oranges and lemons to your own mini tropical forest.This is a list of just a few of the plants that can be grown in your conservatory

Aeonium ‘Zwartkop’  Succulent with very dark purple-black leaves. Pinch out to encourage branching. Needs good light. Pot into Cactus compost and feed 2-3 times in growing season. Keep drier in winter. 60 cms (2 feet)

Aloe brevifolia  Attractive succulent forming geometric mounds of tight rosettes of short softly spined leaves. Grow in loam based compost with added grit and keep on dry side in winter. Minimum 0 – 3° C.

Asparagus scandens  A dainty twining climber from South Africa with soft green ferny foliage, ideal for climbing up a trelllis, but is equally effective as a trailing plant in an ornamental pot. Unlike some other

Cyperus albostriatus  (Cyperus diffusus.) A low-growing relative of the Papyrus, this makes good groundcover for the edges of a pond in mild gardens, if allowed the space to spread. Otherwise makes a nice container plant v

Jasminum azoricum  Tender, evergreen Jasmine with sweetly scented white flowers March-Dec. Needs support. Grow in a loam based compost in good light but protected from hot sun. 4 metres (12 feet) plus. Minimum 0 – 3°

Justicia carnea – purple leaved form  Tender shrub of open habit with dark green leaves with a purple reverse and spectacular, large plumes of bright pink tubular flowers from mid summer to autumn. Cut back in spring to promote bushy