e-mail Jane Owen with your gardening questions: jane.owen1@timesonline.co.uk

I am keen to try composting since we’ve gone to two collections a week but I don’t like the idea of rats or worms! Naomi Hine, London

The rats can be avoided but worms are important and you may have to have to learn to love them. Your local authority may supply composting bins or, if not, buy one from a local garden centre and choose one that is sealed so that rats can’t get inside. To be on the safe side don’t add egg shells or meat to compost because they attract rats. Worms are key to the composting process so much so that you would be best off choosing a wormery as your composter. There are many on the market and they range from ones that look like wheelie bins through to barrel-shaped constructions in three sections. All have taps at their base to drain off liquid so that the worms don’t drown and so that you have a nutrient-rich mix for the garden (which needs to be diluted 1:10 before use). The worms stay inside the bin and, as you tip more kitchen waste onto them and see the resulting compost they make, I’m sure you will begin to appreciate the glory of these creatures. Finally if you really can’t stand the thought of worms you could try composting with the bacteria, Ems which you can buy here: www.wigglywigglers.co.uk. I have used it and found it does what the tin says although I have not had the courage to add meat to the mix which, according to the suppliers, composts well and without smell. My only quibble with this system is that it is time-consuming (the compost has to be cut up although I don’t always get round to that) and the buckets supplied are small.

We are planning a party next month and want to light the garden, but we are on a budget and do not have electricity in the garden. Is there such a thing as a source of cheap garden lighting? Garden flares only last an hour or so because our garden can be breezy. Julia Mills, Brighton

Tea lights in old jam jars do well and you can wrap the jars in coloured tissue paper to add a festive note. My favourite party lighting comes from Chinese lanterns which cost a couple of pounds each in London’s China Town (Chinese supermarkets also to sell them). You’ll need to stick tea lights in place inside the lanterns before the party or they’ll move in the breeze and make the lantern catch fire. Many solar-powered garden lights are cheap – and the ones I’ve come across look awful.

It looks as if my box is dying. I have never had trouble with it since I planted it six years ago but now it is going brown in streaks. The box is crucial to the garden – it makes knot into which I have planted herbs and bulbs. Mary Gordon, Somerset

Your design sounds lovely but, unfortunately, the box may be suffering from two fungi which are storming through a lot of box gardens - Cylindrocladium and Volutella. They causing dieback and, eventually, death. No chemical solution is available to amateurs although trials at Wisley suggest that penconazole may help. Hygiene is one of the ways you can at least stop this spreading. This means using clean tools around box and clearing away and destroying clippings. If your box finally succumbs why not think about replacing it with Sarcococca which scents the air in winter and makes an excellent and unusual knot garden plant?

Two of my arisemas (I planted six last year) are rotting. H. Wiseman London

They need to be kept in moist but fast draining soil and if they are ever left in water logged soil they will rot and die.

My dahlias last year were not impressive – the flowers never got large although I lifted them and fed them as instructed. Al Stockbridge, Sutton

You need to take off some of the flower buds to get large flowers. It’s also important to have rich, fertile well-drained but moist soil in a sunny, airy (but not windy) site. Once the buds begin to appear use a high potash feed having started the season with regular general feed – these are hard working, hungry plants.

I have come across a type of foxglove in Devon which is about 80 cm with lots of small golden flowers. Jay Goddard, Manchester

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