Space is a precious commodity, so limited and expensive in towns and cities that it makes sense to enjoy every inch you have. If like many of us, you live in apartments that now define our urban landscape, the challenge is how to engage your children in meaningful outdoor activities. However …
It is not the Engineers or Actuarial Scientists who gave Nairobi it's famous moniker-"The green City in the Sun". It was the dedicated local gardeners, landscapers and horticulturalists under the leadership of Peter Greensmith who toiled to bequeeth us a City bristling with life, love and nature.…
MAXIMING YOUR GARDEN SPACE BY USE OF VERTICAL GARDENS
Got a small garden?
The smaller the garden the more important the vertical surfaces around it. Vertical surfaces consisting of wallS, pillars, poles and tree surfaces offer as much growing space as the ground area, sometimes e…
Yours could be the perfect postcard garden complete with a glistening velvet lawn, flourishing beds draped in arresting colours. That is until you acquire pets in form of dogs and cats. Then the whole garden scenario changes!
How do you keep creatures that are essentially wild in an environ…
Pruning is the removal by trimming or cutting off parts of a plant that are old, dead, diseased or not needed for a plant’s growth, or whose continuous presence can be injurious to the plant’s health.
Acalypha above requires restrictive pruning as it is encroaching on the path while at …
Hydrangeas are flowering shrubs with colourful globe-shaped blooms. They are native to Asia and the Americas. They were first cultivated in Japan.
Although they occur in 75 species, your common hydrangeas are more likely to have come from the more common six species; smooth, big leaf, panicle, clim…
This possession of pets t…
It is the season of lawn troubles!
Whenever there are drought conditions, lawns planted without consideration reveal themselves spectacularly. And even more, poorly maintained lawns announce themselves unhindered, bearing the ugly truth; that your lawn could have done with a little more care! Unfo…
If you want to be remembered, build in stone, write a book or plant a tree!
For all my primary school years, we only had two head teachers. But I knew of a third, who had left long before I was born. The giant gum trees that ringed the school were his legacy. Whether there were others befor…
TO MULCH OR NOT?
What is the big deal anyway? Why not just mulch, given the immense benefits of mulching? And what is mulch anyway?
Mulch is any layer of material applied or spread over the surface around or amidst plants or over a plain ground.
Many gardeners desire to transition from gardening that involves use of chemical inputs to purely organic gardening.
Where the rubber meets the road is how to exactly go about it. Your garden will not be classified as organic if any chemicals in any form are used-no matter how selectively applied.…
Among the most useful plants in gardening is the lavender. Besides being a much cherished herb with a culinary reputation, lavender is applicable in a variety of uses within the garden.
However to efficiently apply lavender in your garden it is important to know which variety is suitable for wh…
HOW TO GROW FRUIT TREES
There was a time fruit trees were in vogue. Then landscapers, facing space constraints, opted for the now common one or two fruit trees stacked in a corner of the property.
But now, thanks to improvement in plant propagation techniques, growing fruits is now trendy again. E…
Why are people obsessed with succulents? One reader recently posed on Quora.
There can be no better explanation for Succulent’s popularity among gardeners than this question. Succulent lovers tend to go overboard with their love for this group of plants. Before I even knew what succulents are, …
Pruning is the removal by trimming or cutting off parts of a plant that are old, dead, diseased or not needed for a plants growth, or whose continuous presence can be injurious to the plants health.
Reasons for pruning
Why do we prune plants?
Plants are pruned to maintain good health. If a…
Whether large or small no garden should be without shrubs. And never mind the space you have; balcony, porch or rooftop-shrubs will serve you right. Even if you are not colour crazy, surely a little bloom can raise your moods.
Shrubs look good all the year round, giving you uniformity, co…
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