I feel safe in saying that weeding is nobody’s favourite garden chore — and yes, this one really is a chore! Nevertheless, it has to be done if we want to keep the garden looking lovely. But how do you know what is a weed and what is a plant to be kept?

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Here, Bruce shows Helen how to revive a flagging flowerbed by removing old plants and replacing them with new ones he has started in his greenhouse. We also talk about a special pest issue around marigolds and how to deal with it.
Sorry about the noise on parts of this video — it’s the wind blowing [...]

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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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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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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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