Features and Advice

Love it or hate it, weeding the garden is something that needs to be done. Martyn Cox shares his hard earned experience in his new series for beginners.

The black and orange ladybird larvae are a strange sight to see in the garden, but they are a gardener’s friend – devouring a massive amount of bugs before pupating in summer and emerging as ladybirds.

Keep an eye out for the dreaded honey fungus. Pippa Greenwood shares her wisdom on identifying this most terrifying garden fungus.

Leatherjackets cause havoc in lawns, eating the roots of grass. Pippa Greenwood has some good tips for ridding your lawn of these pests.

If you’ve heard the horror stories about Japanese knotweed you might want to know how to identify it and whether it’s really as bad as everyone makes out?

Pippa Greenwood offers a timely reminder to be on the look out for the dreaded tomato and potato blight

Look out for the rosemary beetle – a psychedelic shiny, stripy purple and green metallic beetle – on rosemary, lavender, sage and thyme plants.

Pippa Greenwood offers some sage advice against the troublesome box blight.

If your lawn is being dug up by badgers or attracting birds, you may have chafer grubs feeding on the roots. Find out how to get rid of these lawn pests.

If you’re met by a cloud of tiny white flying insects when you go into your greenhouse, it’s probaby glasshouse whitefly. Act now to get rid of these pests.

The slug is one of the nation’s most-hated garden pests, munching its way through soft garden growth, seedlings and plants, leaving a tell-tale shiny slime trail pretty much wherever it feeds and a path of destruction wherever it goes.

There are over 50 different ant species in the UK, most of them pretty well go unnoticed but there a few which can cause a fair bit of grief to gardeners.

Vine weevil alert: look out for the vine weevil this spring. Get to grips with the most hated garden pest with Pippa Greenwood’s advice.

Look out for the Harlequin ladybird in your garden this year, these garden pests are slowly moving northwards.

There is one type of caterpillar that most gardeners dread; the cabbage white. Its favourite host plant for laying eggs are cabbages.

Watch out for aphids on your plants this spring. This common garden pest can cause a big problem for gardeners, sucking sap from plants.