Sustainable wood products
From garden furniture to barbecue charcoal, we use many wood products in our gardens. With hardwood forests being torn down to provide us with our patio furniture, it makes sense to purchase from renewable sources if possible. To help you do this, the Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) allows its logo to be used on approved products. This tells you that the product comes from a sustainable source. Don’t be taken in by statements such as “From a managed source” or similar, without an accompanying FSC label.

Check for the logo on your barbecue fuel, too. Best of all, try to find a local source of BioRegional Charcoal. This is FSC approved, and produced in the UK through the management of woodlands and use of local suppliers. It is an excellent way of regenerating neglected woods and forests, and reducing the impact on the environment of transporting charcoal by road over long distances.

Pests and how to murder them
There’s nothing more dismal in a gardener’s experience than seeing all your hard work ruined by pests. Slugs and snails can wreak havoc in a single night. Aphids can ensure that your beautiful rosebuds never open. There are several natural ways you can deter and trap pests which you can build into your gardening routines. Don't give the blighters a chance!

Spend a little time, regularly, inspecting your plants for pests which you can remove by hand, such as snails, slugs (ugh) and caterpillars. The little grey slugs do more damage than the big juicy-looking ones.

If you can’t bear to handle slugs and snails, set traps. A jam jar buried with its lip level with the soil, with a centimetre of beer in the bottom will be full of slimy creatures, mostly dead, by the morning. Avert your eyes as you empty it in a distant corner of the garden.

Encourage natural predators: ladybirds, hoverflies and lacewings eat aphids; grow marigolds to attract them. Thrushes smash snails; make sure you have tree or shrub cover for them, and feed them in times of scarcity. Toads and hedgehogs snack on slugs and snails; they like safe, undisturbed places to nest, perhaps in long grass at the bottom of the garden, or where you throw garden clippings which are too large to compost. Blue tits eat insects; you could put up a nesting box for them.

Visit Crocus, our choice of online garden centre
You can get everything you need for the garden from Crocus, a convenient and classy online garden centre. Find special offers on plants and gardening products, advice and lots of inspirational pictures of plants to help you choose.
Crocus >

Your route to easier gardening

Do you struggle to achieve the results you want in your garden? Do you put in lots of hard labour without much satisfaction? Visit this award-winning website, which addresses many of the issues gardeners face - and offers solutions.
Carry On Gardening >

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