In these two videos, Barbara shows me how to plant herbs and beans in a pot. The first video contains a neat trick to help figure out how many plants to buy for your pot. The second one, which is a bit longer than most of our videos, is a step-by-step primer on how to [...]

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We’ve already posted some of the videos of Barbara’s ground cover plants, which we shot in mid-May. Here is one more. Of course all of these plants have come along quite a bit in the past month.
This one is called Euoymus fortunei ‘Sarcoxie’.

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Hi, Helen here.
When I showed up at Barbara’s for my first gardening lesson, she quickly told me I was ill equipped for the job! Yes I did have my hat, but I was wearing sandals with bare feet and had no gloves. As you will see from our videos, we both wear protective clothing now. [...]

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This Gravetye Beauty Clematis survived some rude treatment over the winter, but as you’ll see it now lives to bloom another season!

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This is a regular feature that we’ll be doing weekly - Plant of the Week.  I will select worthy plants that you too can have success with.  I’ll let you know how to grow them; where they like to grow; how big they’ll be and give them a star ranking out of a possible 5.
My [...]

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Helen: Barbara, when I see the huge amount of garden stuff that’s available in garden centres I am a bit overwhelmed. How do you know what to buy and how much?
Barbara: Well Helen, it depends on what you want to do. Let’s consider three different purposes: pots, flower beds and vegetables. In each case, have [...]

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If you don’t want to look at a bare cedar fence in your garden but would rather see it covered with lush greenery and blossoms, consider training a clematis plant to climb and spread all over it. In this video, Helen plants a variety called “Mrs. Cholmondeley”. No, we’re not kidding.

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Barbara believes in being unconventional, and in this video she teaches me to sow peas in the flower bed!

This video was shot on May 16. Here’s how the peas look today, and they are about 7″ tall. We can’t wait to taste them!

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In early spring the garden is usually a bit messy after surviving the winter, and you need to clean it up before starting anything new. In this series of videos, Barbara showed me some techniques for weeding, pruning and edging. First, the weeding.

Next, I did some pruning—and I didn’t cut anything I shouldn’t have cut!

Finally [...]

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If you have a shady patch in your garden that needs some lush green ground cover, you might enjoy Asarum canadense, commonly known as Wild Ginger. Here’s some in Barbara’s garden.

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