The Genus Garden

High summer is here with gardens in full bloom and plenty of vegetables to crop and enjoy. Here’s how to keep on top of it all: With garden centres teaming...

After the excitement of spring and the fecundity of early June we have started to fill areas in the garden with annual flowers.  Some have already been sown in-situ and...

Summer is here at last and roses and many perennials are flowering in earnest. There’s still lots to do but make time to appreciate the results of your hard work....

We paid for our enthusiasm and early planting when our french beans got nipped by the frost a few weeks ago but luckily a layer of fleece protected them from...

Last year we split and divided clumps of bearded iris that fill the border on the south side of Field Cottage.  Each rhizome was carefully checked for disease, some were...

Spring has sprung at last and there’s plenty to do in the garden. Here are our top 10 jobs for you to do now. Prune your penstemon now - provided there...

We’ve left some of our pruning of the apple and pears rather late this year so it was a case of ‘out with the tripod ladder’ and ‘get up high’...

A small bed against  the north wall of Genus HQ is planted with a nice mix of  geranium, hellebores, saroccoca, and bulbs.  Several years ago a favourite philadelphus was threatening...

Wonderful weather this week has allowed us to make some progress in the garden.  An area in the woodland garden has a number of Betula jacquemontii underplanted with a variety of...

We spent some valuable time walking around the garden this week looking at jobs to do and making decisions on some shrubs that needed moving. Three philadelphus have been struggling...

In the film Out of Africa Meryl Streep may have had a coffee farm 'at the foot of the Ngong Hills’ but at Genus HQ we are very proud of...

With the recent wind and rain we’ve been holding back a few tasks that we could do if things got just too tempestuous to carry on working outside.  Thursday was...

How many times have you moaned about not having enough time to do all the jobs in the garden?  You have a few hours, but you still can’t manage to...

This week we started to  replace the netting on our much loved and productive fruit cage.  Stage one was carried out several weeks ago when a mistake was rectified and...

The snowdrops are in full bloom and we can just see the tips of the narcissus tete-a-tete, a sign that spring is just around the corner.  Here are our top 10 jobs...

With the air crisp and the grass frozen we kept off the lawns last week and spent some time spreading compost on the vegetable beds and turning the heaps.  Our...

It’s mid winter, but there are plenty of jobs to get on with in the garden. Here’s our top 10: Cut down tatty stems of perennials such as sedum and...

It may be a quieter month in the garden but there is still plenty to do to keep the garden tidy and weed-free, ready for the year ahead. Clean and...

It's chilly, but there's still plenty to harvest, prune and tidy, and this is a great time to prepare for the busier months ahead. If your garden lacks winter interest...

We’ve had our first snow of the season at Genus HQ.  Cold blustery showers on already very wet ground made gardening virtually impossible.  Standing on the paths to avoid damaging...

Some of our favourite plants in the Genus garden are also some of the most successful; they put on so much growth that we dig up and divide them every...