Gardening UK, Anglian Gardener, online gardening for the UK

This site is intended as a source of online gardening information, inspiration and entertainment for all gardeners from the expert to the reluctant, wherever you may be.

For gardeners who want information and advice on choosing and growing plants, patios, decks, sheds etc. Without wanting to become a horticulturalist or take a garden design course to get there.

We don't do trendy, we do what works and what you want in your garden.

Most popular pages this month

Fast Growing Plants

Clay Soil

Laurel - Prunus laurocerasus

How to Deter Cats

How to Deter Frogs

Spring - Primroses, Primula vulgaris one of the first and most welcome of the bringers of spring. Now available in a number of colours, but none meet the grace and beauty of the pale yellow of the native species. Sow some seed this year in trays and plant them in the autumn to reap the rewards next year. Primroses to buy

More pictures - Spring

April

Tree Lily 3 top size bulbs £9.99 - 9 for £15.99 More on tree lilies	6x4 Shiplap Apex Shed £259 Overlap Apex Shed 8' x 6' £329
Buy plants and products online avoid the stress of the offline retail experience.	How to build a patio Extend your living space and the seasons of use of your garden

Gardening Quotes

Spring has arrived when you can set your foot on 7 daisies at once.
Traditional

The year's at the spring
And day's at the morn;
Morning's at seven;
The hill-sides dew-pearled;
The lark's on the wing;
The snail's on the thorn:
God's in his heaven -
All's right with the world!
Robert Browning

When all the chores are done, the avid gardener will invent some new ones.
Anon

How fair is a garden amid the toils and passions of existence.
Benjamin Disraeli

A small garden, accordingly, gives its owner a far greater opportunity to express himself ... in a garden any man may be an artist, may experiment with all the subtleties or simplicities of line, mass, color, and composition, and taste the god-like joys of the creator.
H. G. Dwight, Gardens and Gardening, Atlantic Monthly, 1912

He who plants a garden plants happiness.
If you want to be happy for a lifetime, plant a garden.
Chinese Proverb

how me your garden and I shall tell you what you are.
Alfred Austin

As is the garden such is the gardener. A man's nature runs either to herbs or weeds.
Francis Bacon

What do we look for as reward? Some little sounds, and scents, and scenes. A small hand darting strawberry-ward. A woman's aprons full of greens.
The sense that we have brought to birth. Out of the cold and heavy soil, The blessed fruits and flowers of earth. Is large reward for our toil.
Ruth Pitter, The Diehards, 1941

I do not think I have ever seen anything more beautiful than the bluebell I have been looking at. I know the beauty of our Lord by it.
Gerald Manley Hopkins

Gardening takes a plot of land, a hoe and willing muscles. Scratching the soil, harvesting garden fruits, are peaceful results. With a garden, there is hope.
Grace Firth

The greatest gift of the garden is the restoration of the five senses.
Hanna Rion

Gardening is a way of showing that you believe in tomorrow.
Author Unknown

Quotes archive

April - This Month

Jobs / Tips

Get out and mow the grass as soon as possible if you haven't done so already (I'm writing this in East Anglia - England, but it applies to pretty much the whole of the UK and much of Europe and North America too).

Begin to look out for weeds and get them as soon as you can. Weeds are always early risers in the spring and are much easier to remove while small than when they get larger.

Finish pruning back tall stems of Buddleia, dogwoods, willow and any others left over from last year.

Protect young shoots from slugs and snails, scatter pellets / slug pubs or whatever particularly around clematis and herbaceous plants (they love Delphiniums). As soon as there are shoots to eat the slugs and snails will appear from nowhere.

Watch out for early signs of aphids too. There will hopefully be less this year due to the cold weather we've had, but it's about now that they start to come out of hiding and build up their numbers.

Did you sow all of the seeds you intended? March is the main sowing time for many plants, hardy or half-hardy.

If you've never tried growing your own vegetables, or grown anything from seed, then this is a good month to sow. I tend to go for things that are either expensive in the shops or difficult to get really fresh. I don't see the point of struggling against the slugs and weather to get a crop of lettuce that I can't possibly eat quick enough at the time when they are almost giving them away in the shops.

Beans are easy and don't travel well so the ones in the shops are never as good or fresh as home grown. Broad beans are good as are French beans and very easy too. French beans don't need all the long canes that runner beans need, but wait until the end of the month though or early May before sowing them outdoors.

I also go for spinach because I like it in salad better than any other leaf (apart from watercress, but I don't have the appropriate flowing watercourse).

Absolutely last chance for an end of winter tidy-up if you haven't yet done so. Dead leaves, twigs and other debris laying around under shrubs and around borders looks untidy and can harbour pests and diseases.

Lift and divide summer flowering perennials. Get free plants to spread around the garden or your friends and neighbours in the process. They should be fairly easy to dig up with a fork as there won't be many fine roots yet.

Make plans. Consider plants and planting. Put canes or a hose pipe across the garden to mark out planned beds, patios or other features. Then ignore it for a few days, look out of the window and change it all totally if necessary.

Plants for April More...