Garden Answers

Garden Answers is a vibrant and inspiring gardening magazine filled with ingenious design ideas and exciting plant combinations guaranteed to make your garden beautiful.

Welcome

Celebrate FIRST LIGHT • Depending on where you are in Britain, February can offer frosty winter scenes or the first glimmers of spring. If the season is kind, the garden should start to come to life before the month is out. Hellebores, aconites and snowdrops will shine, quickly followed by crocuses, early narcissus, scilla and other dainty flowers.

Be inspired by... • Plants, books, events & buys for the month ahead

RARE PLANTS COMPETITION

THE NATURAL WINNER

Houseplant care • The latest accessories to help you look after your indoor plants

Wish list • These hot-to-trot plants can be sown in Feb with heat

Retiring roses

HISTORIC PLANTS COME BACK TO LIFE

NEW WISLEY ORCHID HOUSE PLANNED

What’s on...

WIN A HYDRIA FOUNTAIN KIT

Have a heart • Can you identify the following plants with heart-shaped leaves? They’d make a great lasting Valentine’s gift!

NGS BIGGEST EVER CHARITY DONATION

BRIDGE RESCUE

30-minute makes

Book of the month

Scent-sational INDOOR PLANTS • Forget plug-ins and perfumed sprays: houseplants can fill your home with natural fragrance. Jane Perrone chooses some of the best

Orchids for OLFACTION SATISFACTION

Scented SUCCULENTS

Powerful PERFUMES

Leaves TO LOVE

And some stinkers…

BRIGHT & EARLY Dainty bulbs • Create a carpet of colour with these bijou beauties

CREATE A TINY LANDSCAPE • Bring a miniature desert scene to life with cute cacti and super succulents

HEAVENLY HAMAMELIS • Scented spidery witch hazel flowers bring winter colour at head height. Sue Fisher picks her top cultivars

February • It’s a month when lots of simple tasks make a big difference in the garden. Now’s the time to prune buddleia, tidy the patio and start off some exciting new plants

PLANT CLIMBING ROSES NOW • Bring colour and scent to a wall, fence or arch with a climbing rose or two

SPRUCE UP THE PATIO • Some simple tasks make a big difference and a little tidying, cleaning and preserving can really smarten up the patio now as spring is on the horizon, and the excitement of a new season builds.

Herald spring with SNOWY JEWELS • Sprinkled among a backdrop of burgundy bergenia leaves are dainty snowdrops and sweetly-scented daphne

Garden entertainers • Adrian Thomas revels in the antics of some of our favourite garden birds, the tit family, and looks at how you can help them thrive

“Snowdrops look delicate but they’re really tough plants” • Carpets of common Galanthus nivalis have been joined by 400 rare and unusual kinds as well as colourful early spring bulbs in Olive Mason’s Worcestershire garden

“We have something for every season” • Graham and Maxine Pettigrew’s suburban corner plot near Edinburgh bursts with floral jewels as winter ends and spring begins

A SNOWY SEA OF BLOOMS • Millions of snowdrops await visitors to this centuries-old historic garden of flamboyant follies, pools and woodland

Life on the VEG PATCH • Alice Whitehead revels in the magic of mulching, trench composting and dreaming of homegrown chips

Build a TOMA TO CAGE • This smart support for tomato plants will turn the cascading fruits into a gorgeous — and delicious — feature for your patio

Solution of the month

Q&A

Design Solutions

Robot Mowers

PRODUCTS

Over to you! • WRITE TO US AT Garden Answers, Bauer Media, Media House, Lynch Wood, Peterborough PE2 6EA EMAIL gardenanswers@bauermedia. co.uk TEL 01733...