Garden Tips & Tricks

When to prune: using the lunar cycle as a pruning guide.

Pruning on a waning moon is a long-standing practice in traditional horticulture, based on the observation that sap pressure in the plant's tissues is lower during this phase. Less sap at the cut is said to help the wound seal more quickly and lower the risk of rot setting in. It's a tradition many gardeners still follow rather than a firmly proven mechanism. 🌿

🪵 How to apply it:

· The days from the last quarter through to the new moon are the ones traditionally recommended for formative pruning, thinning and removing thicker branches
· It's suggested you avoid hard pruning on the full moon and the two days before it
· The new moon suits light maintenance pruning

One thing that matters more than the moon: in the British climate, the season is the bigger rule. Most formative and hard pruning is done in the dormant season, from late autumn to late winter. And some plants have firm exceptions worth knowing — prune plums and cherries in summer, not winter, to avoid silver leaf, and don't cut birches or acers in spring, as they bleed sap heavily.

Lunar gardening calendars are easy to find here, with the days marked by month, and the moon phase is in any diary.

The practical rule: learn the phase, not the date — but let the season lead 🌙

Some plants carry essential oils with a genuine mosquito-repelling effect — but it's worth knowing how they actually work. The active mechanism is contact: rubbing or crushing the leaves releases the volatile compounds. Just sitting in a pot across the patio, the effect is minimal. 🌿

The ones most useful for active use: citronella / lemongrass (rub the leaves on skin or clothing), basil (place freshly crushed sprigs near doorways and entry points), marigold (plant along bed edges, where the compounds drift into the air nearby) and mint (crush and set on windowsills).

These plants are a complement, not a force field. On a summer evening they help take the edge off midges and mosquitoes, but the single most effective thing you can do is tip out any standing water — buckets, saucers, water butts, blocked gutters — where mosquitoes breed.

🪵 The easiest to grow in a British garden:

· Citronella / lemongrass — happy in a warm spot or a pot you can move under cover; the strongest documented of the group
· Marigold — cheerful, easy bedding plant for bed edges
· Mint / spearmint — double duty: kitchen and repellent (keep it potted, it runs)
· Lavender — scented, drought-tough, loved by bees too
· Basil — double duty: kitchen and repellent, best in a warm sheltered spot

A few pots by the back door, leaves crushed on a warm evening — a pleasant, low-effort way to make sitting out more comfortable 🌸

An aphid colony can double every couple of days. A single female produces dozens of young a week — already pregnant at birth. One aphid becomes millions in a month.

Reach for the neem oil, and you'll find five predators were already answering the infestation before you even noticed it. 🌿

The ladybird larva — black, spiky, shaped like a tiny alligator — eats hundreds of aphids before it grows its wings. More than the adult gets through in weeks. People squash it because it looks nothing like a ladybird.

The lacewing larva kills aphids by the dozen with sickle-shaped jaws, and piles the empty husks on its back as camouflage.

The hoverfly larva — blind, legless, shaped like a little slug — was laid by its mother right in the middle of the colony. It empties hundreds of aphids before it pupates.

The braconid wasp injects an egg into a living aphid. The larva consumes it from the inside, turning the aphid into a bronze, papery mummy.

Neem oil kills the larvae too. With the predators gone, the surviving aphids had nothing eating them — and the colony bounced back within 48 hours.

The first responders were already there. You wiped them out the moment they arrived.

Before you spray anything: look closely. The black, spiky larvae on your stems aren't the problem — they're the solution 🐞

Take the trees out — then ask where the water went. The connection between the two is almost never explained. 🌊

What a tree actually does with rain:

Tree roots open vertical channels in the soil, reaching as deep as two to three metres under mature trees. When rain falls on wooded ground, it follows these channels downward instead of running off the surface. It percolates through the organic humus layer, which works like a sponge, then through clay and silt, then slowly down to the subsoil and rock beneath. That water feeds the groundwater. A spring lower down keeps flowing because the water table above it is constantly being topped up.

What happens when the trees are removed:

Rain falls on bare, compacted ground. With no root channels to guide it down, it runs across the surface — and takes the soil with it. It reaches streams as fast run-off, causes flooding lower down, then pours away towards the sea. Nothing reaches the groundwater. The water table stops recharging, springs dry up, and the compacted soil loses its ability to soak up water at all.

Why this matters in your own garden:

Every mature tree in your garden works as a small water-infiltration system. Its root network helps direct rainfall down into the ground rather than letting it sheet off towards the road or drains. Removing a large tree — especially on a slope — doesn't just change how the garden looks. Over time it changes how that piece of ground handles water, and you may notice more surface run-off or a wetter, more compacted lawn afterwards.

Replanting with deep-rooted native trees rebuilds this function over the years: pedunculate oak on general ground, alder in damp spots, white willow along water, ash where it's healthy to do so. The result shows over decades — not at once, but measurably.

A tree doesn't hold water on the surface. It sends it underground, where it lasts 🌳