Tending to the garden is an often under-rated treat. Whether you hope to create a kitchen garden from seedlings, encourage new visitors with feeders and nestboxes or simply cut your own spectacular blooms for a vase, follow The Field’s advice.

That a fruitful garden requires hours of work is a myth. If you hope to see more flora and fauna, consider creating a wild meadow and simply watch it grow if you are short on time. Or plot your nestboxes and feeders wisely by following our advice.

Though seeds require a little more attention, suppers from the garden are immensely satisfying. From low-maintenance veg for the patch to reinvigorating an old tree or plant, get the allotment in order without calling the experts in. From kale that works well with game to rhubarb to make a crumble and homegrown chillies to add fire and flavour, take inspiration from The Field’s recipes for ideas on how to use your harvest.

A colourful garden year round is a hard task

So much of both the enjoyment and frustration of gardening comes from attempting to bring together plants that will enhance each other in look, in habit and, especially, in colour…

Apple trees in an orchard

There are three certain things in life: death, taxes and the presence of at least one apple tree in the garden you get when you move house. Of all ‘top…

‘Tis the season to spend money and ’tis no good pushing back against the fact. Nor, I imagine, do we really want to, since we don’t want to be thought…

Pruning a diseased apple tree

I like to think that I am a proper gardener, by which I mean that cataracts and hurricanoes have to spout until they drench our steeple (we live next door…

What is it with gardeners and coloured foliage? Why do purple, red or yellow leaves seem to appeal so strongly? Is it a positive aesthetic reaction to these colours or…

In the late 1980s, I was involved in the making of two series of programmes for Channel 4, entitled Village Show. We visited flower shows all over the kingdom, including…

Beautiful pink roses

I can’t help it. Every time a friend tells me that they bought their house because of the wonderfully friable, medium loam soil in the garden, I gnash my teeth.…

Chickweed is one of the many annual weeds that can blanket borders

Ah, the merry month of May. How much we look forward to it, since it always feels like the time of greatest promise in our gardens. You can almost taste…