Events in December:

- Winter Wonderland Weekend - 1 December 2007, RHS Garden Hyde Hall, Essex. Details

- Floristry - Christmas Creations - 5 December 2007, Reaseheath College, Cheshire. Details

- Christmas Flower Arranging - 19 December 2007, Pershore College , Hereford & Worcester. Details

51 glorious garden websites

Times Online's gardening guru opens her address book to share her top pick of gardening websites

Related Internet Links

• A ten step guide for novice gardeners

• The gardening year planner - what to do, when

• Guides for vegetable growers

BACKGROUND

• A gardener's guide to healing herbs and flowers

• Fruit bushes: what to grow and how to get a good crop

• Plant it now: a beginner's guide to snowdrops

• Neil Wormald’s week: a potted guide to growing chillies

• A guide to making a great patio garden

BACKGROUND

• A year in the garden: tasks for every season

• How to start a vegetable garden

• Twenty vegetable catalogues

• Eight great vegetable gardening books

BACKGROUND

• Growing kinds of chilli. . .

• Go ahead, pack it in

• Seeds of change

• Dolce vita on a plate

• Salad days that last forever

BACKGROUND

• Let’s not lose the plots

• A plot on the land

• Seeds of change

• There's life in the allotment

• One potato, two potato...

December's Reader Queries answered by Stephen Anderton, The Times. Click here

Week 1:

What to do this week:

- Deciduous hedging can be planted now, so long as the ground is not frozen or waterlogged

- Pinch out the growing tips (back to the second or third pair of leaves) of autumn-sown sweet peas

- Clean house plants regularly to keep the leaves free of dust

- Check all stored fruit and vegetables and remove any that are showing signs of disease

- Grapevines can be pruned now that they are dormant.

(Neil Wormald, Sunday Times)

Week 2:

Weekend tips:

- Clear up the last eddies of fallen leaves on gravel, or the worms will come to the surface for them and bring up soil.

(Stephen Anderton, The Times)

Week 3:

Weekend tips:

- What a wonderful shrub is Melianthus major for this time of year; such clean, dramatic foliage when so much else in the garden is shabby. Snip off the older lower leaves and it will look perfect. Ever come away from the Chelsea Flower Show wanting a whole drift of those creamy, peachy verbascums?

- Now is the time to take root cuttings. Lay down or stand upright 8cm lengths of pencil-thick root in a tray of gritty compost, topped off with pure grit. Shoots will appear next spring. Try also Geranium sanguineum, border phloxes and perennial eryngiums.

- Towering old lilacs can be rejuvenated now by cutting out all the thinner growth and shortening back the main branches to the desired height. Lilacs are hungry beasts: a big mulch of compost would be very welcome.

(Steven Anderton, The Times)

Week 4:

Weekend tips:

- There is nothing so satisfying as pruning wisteria! Cut back all the long wands of growth to a couple of buds. Next year’s flowers will come mostly on those short, stumpy spurs of growth. Make sure you pull off any suckering shoots sprouting at ground level

- While the ladder is out, cut back any creepers which have made themselves just too much at home around the gutters – Virginia creeper, solanum, honeysuckle, ivy

- Consider ordering seeds especially for plants in paving cracks: Eryngium agavifolium, Carex buchananii, marjoram, Corydalis lutea, etc.Put on your goggles and deal with all those dead leaves under the crowns of yuccas. The old ones will pull off, the younger ones will need cutting with sharp secateurs

- Chop round and reduce rampant, suckering perennials (euphorbia griffithii, lysimachia, pleioblastus variegatus) so the underground stems are restricted to their intended area.

(Steven Anderton, The Times)

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