Get Good Growing Advice. (bbc.co.uk/gardening)

Member Name: HamishMacbeth

Product:	bbc.co.uk/gardening
Date:	29/07/01 (513 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: good advice for all gardeners

Disadvantages: not enough of Charlie Dimmocks' greatest assets!

I'm surprised to see that this site hasn't been reviewed before now especially as gardening seems to be the'in thing' at the moment.Where shall I begin?

On landing on the homepage you will see quite a lot of topics to choose from and a long list of categories to click on and open down the left-hand side of the page.Although it has got a lot of information, don't be too put off, it is all viewer friendly with those nice people like Alan Titchmarsh and Charlie Dimmock among others to guide you along.

It's not just for new gardeners or people with large gardens.You can find all the information you need on anything from fruit and veg,to trees and shrubs,to houseplants.There's a good section designed for children too,good idea give them a healthy respect for plants at an early age.

It's a very handy reference site that anyone who owns a plant will find very useful indeed.

I like it because I can't seem to keep all the information that I try and gather in my ageing brain for very long these days,yes the old grey matter seems to be turning a shade similar to the rust variety if you know what I mean.Having this in my favourites page means that Louise and I can drop in and find out what we want know fairly quickly and easily.

Looking down the categories you will see topics like Back to Basics, this will help you if you haven't grown a certain plant before and want to find out how to do it from start to finish,showing you how in step by step form with pictures to help you see what you are aiming for.

Factsheets from all the BBC gardening programmes are on here too with the exception of Beechgrove Garden (who have their own site)and you can catch up with all the news if you have missed a favourite show.

There is a message board where you can ask the experts questions for any problems you are encountering with your garden masterpieces and its worth taking a look first in case
your question has already been answered.

Another really good bit is the hints and tips page. Have a look in this section and find very good tips to keep the cats off your flowers,keeping slugs away etc. These all come from ordinary Joe gardeners like you and me and if you think you have a good tip you can post it here too,but like before check to see if it hasn't been posted,this can take a while to as there are a great many of them.

One of the best things on this site is the Timely Tasks section. This takes you through a year in the garden giving you advice on what you should be doing like when to prune, taking cuttings,when you should be planting this and that and wildlife to look out for etc. That may be obvious to the more confident gardeners but we aren't all that clever and its always good to have a bit of backup.


Finally in the fun section there are competitions and you can send E-cards which are quite nice, very colourful and flowery if you like that sort of thing.

There is also a section where you can find out the significance of a plants name for instance:-

Yellow Tulips,if you send someone these flowers it means that your love has no success and if you are on the recieving end of them and think that is cruel you should send back stinging nettles! Ooer! Sounds a bit nasty if you ask me.There's a whole A-Z of these little gems but some of them are much more simple like Rosemary for rememberance.

There is such a lot more to this site than I have already told you about and I'm so knackered after telling you all that,I'm going to sign off and get away to my bed.

Hope you find it to be of use and thanks for reading,

Hamish.

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