Blog

You’ve chosen beautiful plants, spent good money on quality specimens, and carefully planned your garden design. Yet something’s not quite right. The garden looks off. If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone! Even experienced gardeners can fall into plant placement traps that sabotage their best intentions. Let me, the Garden Ninja, walk you through the […]

Learning how to grow plants from seed is one of the most exciting gardening skills you can learn. This guide will show you just how easy it is to grow almost anything in your garden from seed, even without any gardening experience! It’s incredible to think that most plants in your garden can be grown […]

You may have noticed tall, thin, segmented green spikes emerging in your flower beds, driveway, cracks in paving or behind the shed and then realised it’s a mare’s tail. This weed is remarkably resilient and can survive in nearly all conditions and environments. But if mares’ tail or horsetail weeds are causing mayhem in your […]

If you spend most of your time trying to stop slugs and snails from decimating your garden’s plants, then its time you think about using slug-proof plants themselves as the deterrent! These slug-proof plants will have those slimy creatures crawling elsewhere! Slug-proof plants don’t just mean boring evergreen blobs, shrubs or trees; there is a […]

Before we roll up our sleeves and get our hands dirty, let me give you the essential information you need to know about planting hedges. I’ve spent over thirty years working with hedges in gardens across the country, from exposed coastal sites to sheltered urban plots. These are the fundamentals that will determine whether your […]

Knowing when and how to lift and divide spring bulbs is a common question that thousands of new gardeners have asked me, the Garden Ninja, over the years. The number of questions usually stops beginner gardeners from lifting bulbs and dividing them. Often, the fear of lifting already successful bulbs can scare new gardeners away. […]

Sometimes in gardening, even the best-laid planting plans don’t quite work out. Maybe that once-small shrub has become a thug in the border. Perhaps a new shed’s gone up and plunged your prized Calycanthus into shade. Or perhaps you’re redesigning your entire garden and need to start fresh with proper plant positioning and spacing. Whatever […]

If you’ve ever wrestled with ground elder (Aegopodium podagraria), you’ll know just how tenacious this plant can be. One minute, you spot a few innocent-looking leaves at the back of the border, and the next thing you know, it’s elbowing your perennials out of the way. Shoots are emerging seemingly everywhere in your flower beds, […]

There’s something magical about designing a garden. Whether you’re tasked with designing a cosy courtyard, a suburban back garden, or a sprawling multi-acre landscape garden, the same garden design principles will apply. Although the sizes differ, the creative process follows the same pattern, which is why some form of garden design training is essential to […]

Lawn edging and flower border edge strips are really effective at keeping your garden, flower beds, and lawn looking sharp all year round. In fact, it’s one of my garden design secret weapons! I use lawn and border edging in most of my designs to help reduce garden maintenance and give you more time to […]