GroBox has been proud to launch the Children’s Butterfly garden this year, we have been planting with our local schoolchildren. We planted Children’s garden, Wildflower garden, Vegetables and Herbs with out little growers.

It was a fabulous experience and the local press came too! So let’s hope our little growers  continue their passion to become lifelong gardeners and make the world a greener place.

We have also created a beautiful Scented English Wildflower garden, this allows our native butterflies and bees to be able to pollinate our beautiful countryside and keep our hedgerows and meadows fabululous for future generations. 

We have planted our Summer Vegetable gardens and now enjoying, spinach, radish and the peas are rambling up the broadbeans, they are all in full flower so we are just waiting for the fowers to turn into fruit to enjoy on the kitchen table.

The beautiful spring days are really keeping us busy in the garden this week, on top of all our weeding and sowing we can now add watering to the mix as our rainfall has either been a continuous downfall or nonexistent. This inconsistency in watering leaves our borders lawns and pots still rather dry for the time of year. Large downfalls on dry lawns gives rise to flooding and the much needed water running off down to lower ground. As I was on my travels a number of our local golf courses were certainly looking rather waterlogged last week as the hard compacted ground was not allowing the water to drain through. So a job for all of us this week is to keep forking those lawns for aeration, hoeing the borders and keeping your pots soil moist.

Sadly an unwelcome pest was found this week in my garden, the lily beetle, and this horror had managed to overwinter in my soil despite the recent prolonged, cleansing frost. The lily beetle has a gigantic appetite for any of our plants from the lily family that is a whopping 240 genera and 4640 species of herbs with rhizomes or bulbs with a few trees and shrubs. So if you grow alliums, agapanthus, lilies, tulips, colchicum, to name a few look out for the bright red beetle hiding among its leaves and remove in a way most appropriate to your lifestyle. My pest has now gone but I know that there is more hiding in my pots so I will be vigilant and keep a keen eye on them. Another pest to hit my tomatoes this week is the greenfly, greenfly are amazing creatures as they give birth to thousands of live young in a day, so an infestation really does take no time at all, so out with the homemade mix of washing up liquid and water spray to create a soft soap liquid to keep the pests in check.

A number of new gardening initiatives have started this week; one of them, ‘Make your garden flutter’ is a drive to get more butterflies in our garden. The reality is that there are 59 resident species of that remain in Britain and three quarters are in decline, which is why in association with butterfly conservation I will show you how easy it is to attract butterflies into the garden. Loss of habitat remains the primary source for this decline, which means if you can plant a pot or window box you can make a difference in preserving these beautiful species.

So here are six simple steps to butterfly heaven.

1. Butterflies love heavily scented flowers so plant, Sedum spectabile, and Verbena bonariensis.
2. Plant shrubs and small tress around the edge of your garden with climbers such as common honeysuckle. This provides shelter and protection.
3. Try to get as many plants flowering all through the year, from early spring with daffodils to late autumn, with Buddleia davidii ‘ Harlequin’ as a favourite as it gives them the fuel needed to keep them airborne.
4. Try to remove caterpillars in the garden and not destroy them as they do turn into beautiful butterflies.
5. Trim and prune your borders to let more sunlight in, butterflies love borders in full sun.
6. Plant as many flowers as possible. They attract the butterflies and add colour to your garden.

If you follow these steps you will be rewarded by a visit from 22 species of butterfly.

If you require more information on this, I have a free booklet I will send you, just send your name and address with a SAE to Jayne at the advertiser and you will have your flowerbeds all of a flutter.

Gardeners Diary

Sow Asparagus pea in your pots now, this wonderful vegetable has scarlet flowers and wonderful winged pod with an asparagus pea flavour; it really does give your kitchen table an extra dimension and a talking point.

Choose a sheltered moist soil, plant 8inch apart and support growth with fallen silver birch stems (twiggy pea sticks) pick the pods in late summer…

Keep pond crystal clear with bundles of barley straw, buy from the pet shop and fill a pair of fishnet tights. This encourages good bacteria and stops the water turning green.

Keep your eye out for frosts, the clear blue skies do mean cooler nights so protect tender shoots and young seedlings with horticultural fleece.