Mark McNee

Category: Garden Musings

  • Garden Myths: Number 4

    You can get grass to grow well in the shade. No you can’t. Grass will put up with a lot; how any plants will put up with being regularly cut down and walked all over? Like everything it has its limits and it is never happy in shade, needing full sun to do well. What…

  • Garden Myths: Number 3

    Garden ponds need a filter. Properly designed and planted a garden pond does not need a filter. Long ago when I was a child we had a garden pond, along with many other people of course, but no one had a filter on them. This was for a good reason; they didn’t exist for garden…

  • Garden Myths: Number 2

    Parsley seed must be soaked before you sow it. Some plants seem to attract myth and superstition and parsley is one. The truth is parsley is slow to germinate and gardeners can be impatient, so people have looked to ways to speed things up. To this end it is often said you need to soak…

  • Garden Myths: Number 1

    You must water Rhododendrons, Azaleas and Camellias with rainwater. I’ve heard this many times in hard water areas, based no doubt on the fact hard water contains lime and lime is used to reduce the acidity of soils and composts. While it is true Rhododendrons and other ericaceous need acidic growing conditions the amount of…

  • What is a species

    The idea of a species is fundamental to gardening and botany, but what is a species? A dictionary will give you a definition but not one which allows you to say this group of plants forms a species, as opposed to say a subspecies. The Cambridge Illustrated Glossary of Botanical Terms describes a species as,…

  • New Year – New Vegetable Plot

    The arrival of the New Year inevitably starts you thinking about next summer’s vegetable crop and what to grow. This will of course be influenced by how much space you have available to grow food in and how keen a vegetable gardener you are. The vast majority of us only have so much space available,…

  • Why do they keep changing plant names?

    Why do they keep changing plant names?

    The argument often made for using scientific plant names is that it provides consistency. If you ask for Alchemilla mollis that is what you’ll get. The problem is you keep finding different people referring to the same plant with different names. The exact opposite of what is wanted and causing confusion and irritation to many…

  • Autumn Tidy Up

    With the arrival of dark mornings thoughts turn to tidying the garden up for winter. The first frosts will soon finish off the annuals and tender perennials, while the hardy perennials die back for the winter and the deciduous trees and shrubs will take on their autumn colours before dropping their leaves. Any tiding up…

  • Feed for health

    As I have said before, the vast majority of domestic lawn problems come down to its feeding. That is not to say you can’t over feed a lawn, most people will have seen a lawn scorch where a heap of fertilizer has been left on it killing it. I also remember reading a report many…

  • Is lime poisonous to Rhododendrons?

    The pH confusion People get terribly worried about lime near Rhododendrons, to the extent that some people insist that you should never water ericaceous plants with hard water. The problem is the whole soil pH thing courses all sorts of confusion. So let’s ignore all that’s been said before and start from the very beginning.…