Tools & Equipment

Building a cold frame from recycled materials is worth doing if you treat it like a small outdoor structure, not a flimsy seed-tray cover. The aim is simple: make a…

It is a grey March Saturday in Bristol, and a packet of tomato seed is balanced on the kitchen worktop beside a stack of yoghurt pots. You want plants ready…

You go away for one warm weekend, come back on Sunday night, and the courgettes look like they have given up on life. The tomatoes are curled, the compost has…

It’s February, you’re standing in six inches of waterlogged allotment mud, and the cheap wellies you bought from the supermarket last autumn have just split along the seam. Again. Your…

You are standing in B&Q staring at eight wheelbarrows ranging from £25 to £180 and you cannot tell what makes the expensive one worth seven times the cheap one. They…

You spent two hours weeding the raised beds on Saturday, got up, and your knees made a sound like someone cracking knuckles. By Sunday morning the stiffness had spread to…

You’ve just taken on an allotment that’s been neglected for two years. The soil is compacted, the weeds have roots that seem to go halfway to Australia, and the thought…

You planted out your courgette seedlings on a warm April afternoon, felt proud of your early start, and woke to find them black and wilted after an overnight frost. April…

A practical UK guide to the best garden hoses for patios, allotments, pressure washers and everyday watering, with clear buy and skip advice.

You’ve spent weeks nurturing your strawberry plants from bare roots, watched the first white flowers appear, and then one morning you come out to find every single berry has been eaten overnight. Pigeons on the brassicas. Cabbage white butterflies finding your broccoli before you do. Blackbirds…