Mantra is to reduce
	10:14am Thu 8 May 08
	VAL BOURNE says most garden debris can and should be recycled on site Everybody is talking about compost and recycling as though they have invented it. A short drive down our village on bin day shows how seriously people are taking it. It's a fascinating sight with green bins bulging, glass bottles glinting and enough cardboard packaging to grace an Argos skip - and that's just one house containing two residents!

	For beetles it's brutal
	10:08am Thu 1 May 08
	VAL BOURNE says there can only be one way to deal with the menace of the lily beetle Gardeners hate bright-red lily beetles and I am constantly being asked how to deal with them in a green way. There's only one method and it's brutal - pick the conspicuous creatures off and kill them. But there's a problem.

	Time for clematis
	11:03am Thu 24 Apr 08
	VAL BOURNE urges planting the hardy flowers of the Atragene Group If you have visited a nursery or garden centre that sells climbers in the last few weeks you can't fail to have noticed the wispy flowers of several spring-flowering clematis. Frances Rivis' is one of the bolder ones and there are two forms, the English and Dutch.

	Oh for layers of muck
	11:15am Thu 17 Apr 08
	VAL BOURNE says now is the time of the season to get mulching A month ago I was at Royal Horticultural Society garden at Wisley in Surrey and an army of gardeners, probably 40 in number, were mulching the herbaceous borders and roses with the most friable well-rotted manure I have ever seen.

	Potty over agapanthus
	10:50am Thu 10 Apr 08
	VAL BOURNE offers some useful tips on a popular South African plant We recently held a Gardeners' Question Time for Bridewell Organic Gardens, an Oxfordshire charity that helps to "improve the emotional well being of adults who have suffered from a range of health problems, primarily mental illness", to quote their mission statement. I commend their work as I know it's gardening that keeps me sane, or some would say saner. It's common knowledge that I am not a nice person to know when I'm deprived of my garden!

	Not just colourful
	10:33am Thu 3 Apr 08
	VAL BOURNE says this is the right time to sow easily grown hardy annuals The late doyenne of cottage gardening, Margery Fish, always said that March promised a lot and delivered very little. How right she was! Last month was bleak and it's held up work outside. So far I've only planted onion and shallot sets and broad beans. I am struggling to get early peas in the ground as I cannot find a dry enough day when I'm here.

	Nice time at the theatre
	9:36am Thu 27 Mar 08
	It's spring and VAL BOURNE is enjoying the colourful tiered auricula show One of the pleasures of spring is setting up my auricula theatre, a rather grand name for a set of tiered wooden shelves that hold my collection of about 30 plants. I will be emulating an old 18th-century tradition. But auricula growing has a much longer history.

	The versatile hazel is tops
	10:06am Thu 20 Mar 08
	VAL BOURNE says every garden should have at least two hazel bushes Every garden should have at least two or three hazel bushes - Corylus avellana - tucked into a corner. You can cut the catkins in spring, to add structure to a vase of daffodils. You can create a woodland bed where the dry hazel litter collects, to give shelter for small animal and insect life, including bumble bees. The leaf litter layer will also help and encourage spring woodlanders like the erythronium White Beauty' - pictured in Looking Good.

	Where there's light
	11:49am Thu 13 Mar 08
	VAL BOURNE says crocus has responded to the sunniest February on record I have just been to a Crocus Day held at RHS Wisley. The first speaker, John Grimshaw, voiced the opinion that crocus should be just as popular as snowdrops. John is a well-known galanthophile and co-author of the snowdrop monograph. But then most galanthophiles (or snowdrop lovers) recognise that gardens need both, and therefore usually adore both.

	A must for each garden
	10:28am Thu 6 Mar 08
	VAL BOURNE says now is the time to plant the very valuable rhubarb Many years ago, in a lowly research post, I worked on rhubarb, a valuable crop if forced into early growth. The stems are rose-pink, the foliage crinkly yellow and, when it's cooked, it's an ambrosial food quite unlike the garden-grown, acidic rhubarb that appears later.

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