Gardening

MY TIMING was lousy. Doubly so. Not only was I the only person of the 5,000 watchers in a rather large bar who didn’t speak German, but I had also

WHO IS your hero? I have always had a penchant for explorers: Scott, Livingstone, Indiana Jones and Michael Pallin. But there is one man, who to an everyday-same-route-to-work type like

OUR OWN life expectancy is continually increasing. It was 49 years at the start of the 20th century and 75 years at the end of it. Thanks to modern science,

Will all the other members of the Phoenix family please stand up … Part three I DON’T know if any of my readers come from a big family – do

AS NEWCOMERS to the Algarve, one of the most difficult aspects of vegetable growing is knowing what to sow and when. The golden rule is to talk to your neighbours

The true date palm, Phoenix Dactylifera I AM glad another Christmas is over and under my belt. Goodbye Santa, snowmen, mulled wine, tacky flashing lights, six vegetables, Queen’s speech, chocolate

Christmas is on the doorstep and, as we begin to plan for the festivities ahead, I have been repeatedly asked which herbs I would recommend to have at hand for

If there was a longevity category for Petunias and other bedding plants in the Guinness Book of Records then it would have been broken many times this year. The calmest,

So, at last we have had some really consistent rain. Within hours, plants in the garden centre are looking better, while layers of dust on roadside trees have been washed

Several readers have e-mailed recently regarding fire-damaged trees, asking whether they will recover. A good rule of thumb is that trees regarded as indigenous, such as oaks, carobs, eucalyptus, olives