National Gardening Week 2016

Monday, 11 April 2016

Today is the start of the 2016 National Gardening Week and to celebrate I have collated my eight favourite things I recommend that you do this week…

Get Painting

I love all kinds of painting and this is the perfect time of year to get your garden looking spick and span. From fences and veg beds to playhouses and sand-pits, get outdoors and not only make everything look nice but keep it protected for another year.

Top dress your borders & pots

Like us, plants need nutrients to keep them healthy and growing strong. To do this we need to add compost to the garden and guess what else? Poo! Yes, actual poo! Not ours of course, farm manure. Well, I am going to leave that part to daddy! Poooeeeeee!!

Go visit a new garden

It’s always great to go visit a new garden and there are some amazing ones all over the UK. If you’re in London, go visit the new Magic Garden at Hampton Court. The RHS gardens and the Botanic Gardens are always worth a visit. More locally the maze at Scone Palace is a-maze-ing! And in a few weeks it will be the annual open day at the Garden of Cosmic Speculation. To read M&D’s list of their favourite gardens to visit, click here.

Plant a new veg

You don’t need much space to grow veg. Why not try growing a courgette in a pot on your back door step. Or some tumbler tomatoes in a window box. It’s cool to watch them growing and yummy to eat. Go on, try one this year and see how it goes…

Spike your lawn

Spiking your lawn is a great way of getting air into a compacted lawn and letting the grass grow better (rather than just moss, thatch and weeds!) Try that as well as some lawn feeds and scarifying to get your grass in tip top condition for the summer.

Sow wildflowers

There are always organisations giving out free packets of wildflowers to take advantage of. Use them in a quiet corner of your garden or see if you can find a piece of local wasteland which you can cheer up this summer.

Play a garden game

We are lucky to have a wonderful range of garden games from BigJigs which we will be featuring soon in one of my blogs. From crazy golf and skittles to quoits and croquet, there is  a great range of fun games to invite your friends round to play. Or, of course, the old favourites of hide ‘n’ seek and tag are fun garden games and don’t cost a penny.

Make mud soup

This is currently my favourite garden activity. Anything can be added to mud soup (herbs, sand, water, stones, you name it) but the base ingredient is, of course, mud! Mummy recommends rainsuits and wellies for this game!

For more information on National Gardening Week please click here.

Hopefully you will do at least ONE of these activities during this year’s National Gardening Week, but wherever you are and whatever you do I hope you really do love your garden.

Lulu xx