Your Gardening Questions Answered!

From hanging baskets to tulip displays, our My Weekly gardening expert, Susie White shares her expertise to keep your garden looking beautiful...

I’ve not had a lot of success in the past with making up my own hanging baskets. What can I do to create a really wonderful display?

To create a fabulous hanging basket you need a few key things: the right choice of plants, regular watering plus a really good compost. A big basket gives a bigger display and dries out less quickly.

Adding water-retaining granules helps too. It’s worth spending more and using Dalefoot Wool Compost, a premium potting compost made from Herdwick sheep’s wool blended with bracken. The wool releases a steady stream of nitrogen and other essential nutrients, providing a long term feed.

The wool also traps water so the basket stays moist for longer.

For a gorgeous effect, try ivy leaf pelargoniums (geraniums). These are the kind that are used in every French window box and are amazingly free flowering. Or plant it up with purple petunias and trailing blue lobelia.

I would appreciate any suggestions about what I can do to treat bishop’s weed? I’ve triedweed killer, but it’s all overmy garden and really difficult to get rid of.

Bishop’s weed or ground elder is so invasive it can creep through borders and take over. To eradicate it, you have to get out every last bit as the smallest piece will re-root.

One gardener I know used barley straw to smother ground elder and has written about it at gcplants.co.uk. The rhizomes of bishop’s weed run close to the surface and I’ve found it easier to dig up if given a thick mulch of leaf mould. There is also a pretty form with variegated leaves, but also invasive!

When is the best time to take geranium cuttings? I have not had much success, so would like to know what I am doing wrong.