Care Guides
Care guides by Rupert Foxton-Smythe
426 guides
Where to Find Fresh Wedding Flowers
Many flower guilds will include people who have well stocked gardens or friends who will give generously for wedding flowers or the church, so that the provision of flowers for wedding services is no…
Feeding Flowers
Most growing plants will need feeding – with border perennials sprinkle Growmore around the stems in spring and feed large and leafy plants regularly with a liquid fertilizer.
Growing Fuchsias Outdoors
Site and Soil Any reasonable garden soil will do if it is well-drained. Improve its moisture-holding capacity by digging in compost, peat or leaf mould before planting.
Hobby Plants
Gardening is a healthy, rewarding and immensely popular hobby. Nearly every garden contains a wide range of plants – each one cared for to ensure that it will at least survive if not flourish.
Bulbs, Corms and Tubers–Quick Guide
Bulbs, corms and tubers are the specially modified resting stages of certain plants which enable them to live, dormant (i.e.
Setting up a Garden for Growing Rock Plants
There is no special definition of a rock plant except that it must be a plant suitable for growing in rocky places.
First Requisites for Growing Perennials
The sensible approach to any form of gardening is to decide first whether the piece of ground you have is suitable for the type of decorative plants you wish to grow.
How to Successfully Propagate Plants
Perhaps propagating from seed would appear to be the most obvious way to reproduce plants, but in many cases the plants produced in this way revert to their original form, so in the main it’s better…
Aquatic Plants – Back to the Water
The many thousands of plant species which today cover the land surface of the earth have all evolved from ancestral forms which were aquatic. Indeed, life itself had an aquatic origin.
Basic Structure and Life Cycles of Plants
However apparently different in form or feature representatives of the higher plant divisions may be, in function they are remarkably similar.
Flowering Arranging Origins: How It All Began
To gain an understanding of flower arranging it is interesting to take a backward glance to the beginnings of the art.
Pollination and Plant Reproduction
Pollination is the process whereby pollen grains are transferred from the anthers of a stamen, their site of origin, to the receptive part of a carpel, ie the sticky surface of a stigma.