Gardening news

WIGWAM WITHOUT THE FLIM-FLAM

How!: Garden designer Clare Matthews suggests growing a wigwam of willow withies to make the ultimate living leafy den for children, but an easier option is to buy a ready-woven tepee. In woven rattan on bamboo poles, this portable wigwam rolls up for winter storage. And, if you feel like you're a rotten parent for not having made it yourself, you can always assuage your guilt with Clare's idea for a child-friendly wigwam floor: a layer of cocoa shells to provide a soft, chocolate-scented carpet. Woven wigwam, 213cm high, £85 from the McCord Garden Catalogue, item number MJ4352 (0870 908 7005; www.mccordgarden.com).

PLANT OF THE WEEK

To see one is to want several. The glamorous Agapanthus has striking, architectural foliage and, in late summer, produces stunning blue or white flowerheads on long, strong stems. A native South African that is equally at home on sunny London patios, the African lily is currently appearing in many guises, at Rassell's nursery in west London (020 7937 0481). Take your pick from three-foot, azure blue Agapanthus africanus, 12in dwarf variety Liliput, in deep blue, or white Agapanthus africanus Albus, which can reach a whopping 4ft, to name but three varieties. And just think, all they need is a roomy container filled with John Innes No 2. Prices start at £3.25 per plant.

PROBLEM SOLVED

An expert writes: Each week we ask an expert to solve Londoners' most common garden problems. This week, London-based garden designer Jill Billington says: "People mortgage their lives and just don't have money to spare for the garden. I tell them that you can have an instant effect with inexpensive seeds or plugs. "These days you can buy plugs of hollyhocks and have five-feet of flower in one season. And there are many climbers that grow fast, like ornamental gourds, which will camouflage ugly fences. Cobea scandens will cover a wall in summer; the flowers are like purple daffodils. "Climbing nasturtiums are great, but plant them in grotty soil, adding rubble if yours is rich. "I've grown runner beans simply for their orange flowers and pretty leaves. Purple verbena is usually used for containers, but just watch it spreading across nasty concrete; it will do what creeping thyme usually takes 10 years to do."

BOOK OF THE WEEK

Have your cake: Even the smallest plot should find space for a compost bin to recycle kitchen scraps and garden prunings. But making compost is somewhat of an art. Get it right, and you are rewarded with rich organic matter, like dark fruit cake, to smugly slather on your borders; get it wrong, and you have a heap of unusable, stinking slime. For would-be compost converts, journalist and enthusiast Clare Foster, who has an allotment in west London and cycles to her veg patch with a bag of kitchen waste on the back of her bike, has written a handy book called, simply, Compost (Cassell Illustrated, £8.99), which explains how to make and use barrowloads of the stuff. Start saving your banana skins now.

SHEER MAGIC

Clipping tip: Sheep shears, as head gardeners from Chatsworth House, Levens Hall and Hever Castle will tell you, are the finest tools to use for clipping topiary and box hedging into submission. The Sheffield-based manufacturer Burgon and Ball has been making them since 1730 and the angled blades on its hand-forged steel topiary shears make easy work of the trickiest curves: you simply hold the shears in one hand, and squeeze the handle to work the blades. Liquid fertiliser with seaweed extract is the other vital factor for top-notch topiary. You can buy the topiary shears for £22.95, and a 250ml bottle of topiary fertiliser for £3.49, but, especially for Homes & Property readers, Burgon and Ball will include a tough, nut-brown leather holster, worth £7.95, so you can snip straight from the hip; post and packing is £2.95. Call 0114 233 8262.

GARDENING WEEK

Seeds of salad leaves can be sown direct into crumbly soil or containers; keep sowing a row or two every few weeks for continuous crops.

Dig out perennial weeds on lawn with a trowel and step up lawn mowing, keeping blades high.

Last chance to sow all summer-flowering annuals.

Scatter a general fertiliser around the base of faded spring-flowering bulbs to boost next year's show.

Support tall-growing perennials with canes or frames that they can grow through.

Keep spring-flowering shrubs, such as forsythia and ribes, within bounds by pruning after the flowers have faded.