Mark McNee

Category: Skills

  • How to deal with collapsing plants

    How to deal with collapsing plants

    Every gardener has at some point had to deal with the problem of a plant that has at least in part collapsed. There are two main courses disease or mechanical damage usually due to wind or snow. Where a disease is the course there is no obvious sign of damage and normally all of the…

  • Controlling slugs and snails

    Controlling slugs and snails

    If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door. Ralph Waldo Emerson The battle between gardener and mollusc seems a perennial one and I have lost count…

  • How to prune plants

    How to prune plants

    Pruning plants causes a lot of heart-ache amongst gardeners and a great deal is written about how it is done, often with little thought as to why it is done. It must always be remembered that all plants are either originally wild or descended from the wild  and nobody prunes plants in the wild. Before…

  • Planting up an area with grown cover shrubs

    Planting up an area with grown cover shrubs

    The secret to making a low maintenance garden border is to start off with no perennial weeds, after that the maintenance is no worse than a lawn in the first couple of years and far less thereafter. When creating a border most people make the mistake of making it too narrow, a 300mm (1 foot)…

  • Looking after a pony paddock

    Looking after a pony paddock

    By a pony paddock I am referring to a small field used to keep one or more horses or ponies in usually under a couple of acres. Equipment: Chain harrow Roller Fertilizer spreader Quad bike or compact tractor Pasture topper Annual routine: Once the grass begins to grow in spring, chain harrow the grass and…

  • How to build a sleeper raised bed

    How to build a sleeper raised bed

    As well as retaining walls timber sleepers can be used to create raised beds. A great variety of shapes can be created using these, but the shape of the sleepers only really work well with shapes based on right-angles. This though still provides great scope by interlocking  the basic squares and rectangles,  and varying the…

  • Fixing trellis to a wall

    Fixing trellis to a wall

    Trellis is a very effective way of training climbers against a wall and can either be bought or made from scratch. Fixing it to the wall though can present problems but with a little care result can be both durable and effective. Equipment: Method:

  • How to make trellis

    How to make trellis

    Trellis can be purchased ready made from garden centres and DIY stores but it is in a limited range of sizes, you only have one spacing for the lathes and it is often quite light weight. A far better way is to make it yourself from pressure treated timber and you can chose any sizes…

  • Making garden compost

    Making garden compost

    All gardens produce some waste be it weeds, grass cuttings or dead flower heads and virtually all have soil which benefits from some additional organic matter. The local authority will take it away, often for a charge, or you can recycle your garden waste as compost and reduce the amount you have to buy. The…

  • Choosing paving materials for your garden

    With the vast range of possible paving materials, it can feel a bit daunting when you first start looking at paving materials. To try to reduce the selection down to a more manageable size, it is well to consider the practicalities imposed on you by what you are planning to use the paving for. You…