Guidance, advice and ideas from the experts at Thames Valley Gardens on how to build, maintain and grow your dream landscaped garden. Find tips on what to do each month. Inspiration for creating the garden design of your dreams. Planting ideas for year round colour and scent, and how to guides for maintaining your garden and keeping your lawn in pristine condition.
For many gardens a natural lawn is the norm. In fact, achieving the perfect weed free, tram-lined patch of green is a serious pass time for many a gardener. But there are times when a grass lawn just doesn’t cut it. In areas of heavy wear and tear, shade or drought, natural lawns lose their
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Fences and hedges are the most popular ways of defining property boundaries. When we buy a house we generally find there are already hedges or fences in place and we don’t give them any further thought beyond giving the hedge an annual trim or replacing a broken fence panel after a particularly nasty storm. But
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There is nothing as redolent of an English summer as a classic billiard table lawn. Immaculate stripes of green basking in the sunshine with a strategically placed table and parasol for that all-important afternoon tea. These days, fewer people seem to have the courage to opt for a lawn but you don’t have to take
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As a good proportion of us at Thames Valley Landscapes are parents, we’ve first-hand experience into how difficult it is to convince our kids to get outside and reclaim their rightful space in nature. Yet we also notice that, once they’re out in the great outdoors, they quickly reconnect with the elements and start enjoying
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For the first time, sculptures are taking centre stage at RHS Wisley. In its ‘Exhibition of Modern and Contemporary Sculpture’ event that’s running for the rest of this year, the charity will feature work from six 20th and 21st century artists as a way of highlighting “the relationship between sculpture and the cultivated landscape.” With
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With the quality of our air becoming a huge health concern in our cities and urban areas, we keenly support using organic methods to counteract the effects of pollution for the benefit of our health and well-being. With ‘Clean Air Day’ on 20 June 2019, we have decided to mark the occasion by bringing you
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Turn the clock back to 1950 and the English garden was a different place. The atmosphere would have been alive with insects – an active, buzzy and hazy ecological environment full of tiny creatures. With just 1% of bugs actually considered ‘pests’, it’s likely that just about this entire airborne community was made up of
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In the past spotting a bug or creepy crawly on the leaves of a favourite perennial or prize-winning vegetable would have struck horror into the hearts of most gardeners. Retribution would have been swift and almost always involved reaching for the insecticide to take down the invading invertebrate. Nowadays gardeners are much better versed in
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The weather forecast hints at some wet and windy weather in the Thames Valley these coming weeks. It’s something we all expect from this time of year. But what if – like in 2015 – the bad weather turns up and stays for a while? With advice on how to create drought-free gardens and outdoor
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If your new year’s resolution involves getting your garden ship-shape in time for summer, then you’ll no doubt want to know what’s expected to be hot on the garden scene in 2019. To put you on the right path, we’ve put our heads together here at Thames Valley Landscapes and have created the following list
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