Crafty ideas

By now you've probably made your home feel very festive and Christmassy but have you neglected your garden. You don't have to go overboard and make your garden brighter than the Blackpool illuminations. But a classy, festive fairy garden in a traditional hanging basket is a wonderful outdoor Christmas decoration that the whole family will enjoy and all your guests (if of course you are allowed any) will smile as they step up to your house. The fairies will also love a festively decorated home of their own as they love Christmas and envy our beautifully adorned seasonal homes. You'll...

Summer may be over but October is a wonderful time for creative gardening. Even if it's too cold to go outside, there's plenty of ways to put those green fingers to good use, with some seasonal indoor gardening. Halloween is nearly upon us and these simple ideas make an effective Halloween display inside or outside the house, which will brighten up your home right up until you're ready to start working on Christmas displays.   If you are visiting your local garden centre, you are sure to find an array of autumnal coloured heathers, perfect to brighten up your pots this...

Whilst in lockdown you may be dreaming of sipping cocktails in a beach bar somewhere. You could have a lockdown bar in your very own garden. But as we don't all have the space, this very little bar is a fun project to fetch a little laid back holiday feel to your garden. To give that exotic feel we are going to make our beach bar in a cactus garden. Cacti are wonderfully interesting plants that are easy to care for. They are part of a group of plants called succulents. Sometimes other succulent plants are mistakingly called cactus as they...

Did you spend hours as a child watching those old VHS tapes and fall in love with Disney stories over and over again? But now they are gathering dust in an old cupboard or attic. Hardly a fitting end for those much loved treasures. These days you can watch all those old films online and you might be thinking of throwing out those redundant tapes but did you know they are incredibly difficult to recycle? The tape reel inside these cassettes is particularly harmful for the environment and can only go to landfill if you throw them away. Last Wednesday...

Rock painting has become a very popular activity for children but whatever your age incorporating colourful painted rocks into your fairy garden is a fun way to add an extra element to your fairy display. In the pot above I used painted stones to structure the compost in layers. The stones can help hold back soil and cover bare earth. They also look great in rockeries. They can be used alongside pebbles and chippings to decorate around succulent plants, water features and fairy houses. You can pick up smooth pebbles from your garden centre or you may find some stones in your...