Gardens for the winter

To get colour in your garden add winter flowering plants such as hellebores which are the best of all winter flowering herbaceous plants. Plant in a shaded area with snowdrops and Ires reticulate cultivars, they create a wonderful sight in your garden.

Other ways of creating colour is with bark and stems of trees and shrubs, examples of these are white barked birches such as betula utilis var. and the Tibetan cherry prunus serrula which has cinnamon coloured bark. All with peeling bark will enhance your winter garden.

What to plant in November

It is now the time to plant tulip bulbs. Some tulips do well year to year, some perform less well and are treated as bedding, and replaced every year.
This is now the last chance to plant out winter bedding. Such as wallflowers, forget-me-nots, Primula, Viola and other spring plants, planting them into well prepared ground, or pots of suitable compost.

Support and Remembrance for our Heroes

http://www.helpforheroes.org.uk
Help for our wounded heroes.

http://www.britishlegion.org.uk
Poppy appeal remember what they did for us.

The Prince’s Rainforest Project

Services.

Ways to control slugs and snails organically.

1. Build a wildlife pond in your garden which will attract frogs and toads (Note: don’t put fish in the pond as they will eat the frogspawn hence taking away your ultimate SAS control unit.)
2. Build a hedgehog box and create a small wooded area to hind it (they will find it and they will appreciate your new B+B)
3. Cheap beer, dig holes put plastic cup in it ¼ fill with beer, and cover with a tile or stone. (Leave an enough room between the stone and cup for the slugs and snails to get wasted.)
4. Cuisines, find snails, cook snails, eat snails, (Slugs not recommended.) Recipes next week!

Ponds!

I believe there are only two types of ponds, ones which are good for wildlife and ones what are not so good. The fact is if you add a pond or water feature to your garden you will attract wildlife, but how wildlife friendly is it really? Adding a pond will attract frogs, toads, dragonflies etc, and small animal and birds will come to drink, in turn attracting larger animals and birds into your garden.

However if you decide to create a pond in your garden you will have to think about the final look and how and where it would go. Adding steep slops or just having one depth to your pond will limit access for wildlife, Having a pump and filter makes the pond look pretty and clean but it will remove algae which is food for small pond life, a common mistake is adding fish and think that this makes your pond a wildlife pond, in fact it will make it less so, because fish will eat algae, insects, frogspawn, and other small pond life. But if you want a large pretty clean pond with fish and a big water feature pump, why not build a small wildlife pond next to it.

This could be easily designed into your garden and with a few tall grasses, rocks, and some shingle around the boarders of the ponds. The different colours and shapes set off against the movement and sounds of the water pump and wildlife enjoying your pond will give a really spectacular look.

Bees!

The population of bumble bees and honey bees is on a steep decline, both are important for pollination and without bees our rural landscapes and way of life would be very different. No pollination means decrease in plants, crops, honey. Etc. Taking away plants doesn’t just make the landscape look empty but like taking way the bees themselves would have a dramatic effect on the food chain with buds and flowers, attracting other small insects and animal. Also the bumble bee is a main food supply for mice which in turn feed owls and other wonderful birds of pray.

To attract bumble and honey bees into your garden plant lavender, buddleia, fuchsia and nepeta which are some of their favourites.

Welcome to L.A. Rosie Gardens

This opening blog is designed to introduce you to my company. We are a friendly garden service company within the Hampshire area.

In order to help you improving the look of your garden, I have decided to open this blog with the following purposes: 

1. To start up an interactive network between yourself and L.A Rosie Gardens.

2. To give tips and personal advice on your garden.

3. To show our latest work. 

4. To share our passion for wildlife, and show you professional gardens to look out for. 

5. To offer our services.

 

Please, feel free to comment or ask questions.

I hope you enjoy.