Special reports

When the winter cold hits, plants enter a phase of dormancy.

One of the most important beneficial insects in the garden is the ground beetle family. This fearsome predators have a voracious appetite which will certainly serve you well to control pests in your garden. Slugs and snails beware!

Savoring the garden without spending hours mowing or weeding it is the unfulfilled Quest of all gardeners. Though we dream about it all the time, reality must be acknowledged: the perfect zero-maintenance garden doesn’t exist.

As soon as the word wasp is mentioned, we all shudder at the thought of that insect that somehow always finds ways to turn a nice family picnic into a frenzied gaggle of panicked people! But did you know there were a great many wasp varieties? One of which is particularly interesting: the predator wasp.

Mason bee, Osmia, solitary bee… all these names designate the same pollinating insect. And don’t be fooled by its tiny scale! It is indeed able to pollinate as many flowers as its more famous cousin, the common honeybee.

Always a hassle around the picnic basket, sometimes even a painful sting, the wasp doesn’t seem to manage positive vibes, does it? But did you know its larva devours incredible amounts of insect pests that would otherwise damage our plants? So, unbelievably, the wasp is a beneficial insect in the garden, a big help that […]

Grafting, together with preparing cuttings, is one of the most important know-hows to learn when propagating trees and shrubs.

Chaffinch, great tit, blue tit, robin, greenfinch, goldfinch, wren, spotted woodpecker,

To convert your green waste into green gold like mulch and compost, invest in both a shredder and a composter.

Zero efforts to convert food and plant waste into rich organic fertilizer, a dream come true? Yes it is! Go for vermicompost, it produces and excellent soil mix without any smelly side-effects.

Making your own compost is a practice that helps the environment through recycling waste.

Living the urban life in an apartment but would nonetheless love to make your own compost?

Sneezing, red eyes, runny noses… spring is the time when allergy-triggering plants spread their pollen. A horrible season for allergy-prone people!

Our grand-mothers keep saying they used the roots of a soap plant to build up a foam to wash their laundry. Saponaria is a perennial that’s quite common in our areas, and it helped solve a lot of people’s daily needs: shampoo, skin care, medicine…

Winter is cold and unsuitable for plant growth. When spring comes around, everything bursts into bloom! How do plants set their clocks to bloom at the right time? Vernalization is one of the mysteries

BRF is a common term in forestry. It is derived from the French “Bois Raméal Fragmenté”, or Ramial Chipped Wood. Anybody can make this mulch from crushed and shredded green wood branches. It’s the best mulch for enriching and protecting garden soil.

What does “exotic” actually mean? Plants that come from far away? Plants that look weird? Crazy lush growth and greenery like a jungle? As a concept, “exotic” can mean many things.

What if you turned your garden into a year-round exotic holiday setting? Growing an exotic garden lets you travel between continents without even leaving your home.

Mini garden, courtyard or balcony: if astutely set up, your little patch under the sky can become a space where life is great.

Pozzolana is a mineral mulch extracted from volcanic rock. It is both very long lasting and extremely ornamental. Its red brown color is also

Winter flowers truly brighten up the cold season with their colorful petals.

How should you care for your garden in winter? Snezana Gerbault, an agronomist and engineer, packed all her tips in book that was prized in several recent events.

Even in winter, nature finds ways to gift us with joy and magic, with flowers that are full of warmth and color.

A voluminous body, a louder-than-usual buzz, and colorful fuzz all around – the bumblebee is easy to identify! A particularly active beneficial insect in the garden, it is a diligent pollinator that runs in the same class as the common honeybee: the heavyweight class!

Barberry (Berberis) can be grown into impressive bonsai specimens. Try your hand on this unusual but beautiful

Maritime pine bark is an excellent mulch, both useful and very elegant.

What if nature invaded cities in the “urban farm” mode? The collaborative Incredible Edible trend is pollinating across the plant…

Fending off birds and other plant and vegetable feathered foes is a mission a scarecrow pulls off with glee. But frightening birds away doesn’t mean your scarecrow must look scary! Actually, what is attractive to us is repulsive to them!

Getting back home after the summer holidays makes September a special month. Adults get back to work and children prepare their supplies for school. But in the autumn garden, there’s quite a lot to do, too!

Brrr, winter is just along the corner, bringing along those cold temperatures and foul weather. Not all plants can cope when the outdoors gets colder than freezing. Luckily, there is still a wide range of cold-resistant plants for the garden.

Chemical fertilizers that some gardeners use sure can feed those vegetables in the patch, but not the soil itself!

Be they simple or sophisticated, white flowers are great all-purpose plants in the garden. They pair well with all other colors and fit right into every garden style. You can add them to a colorful arrangement in a flower bed, or go the whole nine yards and make everything white.

Bone-dry soil? Worry not! There’s other options for you than that crisp-brown lawn for a garden. Shrubs, perennials, climbing plants…

No need to worry about whether colors match and pair well. Perfect harmony is so hard to master! A clean, white garden is pleasing in its simplicity. The goal? Introduce as many white blooms as can be, without forgetting rich, textured foliage to give the eye a focal point.

To transform your growing beds into spots of high ecological value, here are a few simple tips and solutions. Common sense applies and points the way to sustainable gardening.

From North to South, along the vast oceans of the world, French coasts are among the most beautiful in the world. They have mild, temperate climates which means that a great many plant options are open to their seaside gardens – botanically speaking!

If planting is one of the most enjoyable things to do in the garden, it is also one of the most crucial phases in the life of a plant, tree or shrub. We owe it to them to plant them well!

Coastal climate batters seaside garden plants with many hardships: strong winds (even hurricanes), sea spray, dry summers, poor soil…

Near the house or on a balcony, growing potted plants are an excellent way to add color and greenery to your home!

If there’s enough space, it’s perfectly possible to set up a comfortable patio, deck or terrace.

Which flowers to plant in a garden box for spring? Perennials, bulb flowers and annuals mix & pair very well for blissfully colorful potting arrangements.

There is a mind-numbing amount of mulches on the market, and it’s never simple to find out which one is best for where you live and the plants you want to mulch.

Infusing lavender oil is quite simple and doesn’t require any heavy equipment. All that’s needed is a carrier oil and the flowers from any type of lavender. Read also: Making lavender oil Lavender, an easy plant to grow Lavandin, the most productive lavender 3 steps to infuse lavender oil Lavender flowers, when steeped in another […]

Lavender oil is a famous liniment. It’s used in perfume and to heal small ailments. There are two ways to make oil from lavender:

Wood as a source of energy is increasingly regarded as a natural solution for heating… and an antidote to rising fuel prices.

Fermented tea, maceration, infusion, decoction… garden tansy sure shares many benefits! Pest repellent and fungicide, it’s also an interesting flower that fosters biodiversity.

Deck, hedge, plants, lawn, garden furniture… Setting up a garden often runs up quite a bill, especially when moving in. Turn into a landscaping pro with these few ideas that’ll help landscape a garden for cheap.

These feed on pests, help plants reproduce, and give the soil better structure. Beneficial insects really give us a real hand in the garden!

Raised gardening gets a resounding “yes”, doesn’t it? Now, the time has come to select the best layout for raised garden beds. Square, rectangles, curves

Guttation is the expelling of excess water or nutrients through tiny openings on leaves and stems. This biological process enables plants to restore balance