Would you like to attract more bees and butterflies in your garden? Come along to this event and find out what you need with specialist advice from Jan Miller Klein author of Gardening for Butterflies, Bees and other beneficial insects.

Scott from Hilltop Honey will be available for all your bee and honey related questions. Have a close up look at some real bees in an exhibition hive. Do you realise how versatile honey is for cooking and baking? Banana and honey muffins made with low fat spread, wholemeal flour and replace half the sugar with honey are much healthier and extremely tasty. Scott will also be baking some tasty honey goodies for you to sample.

There will be plenty of the plants, herbs and shrubs that you need to plant in your garden available in the garden centre along with Hilltop honey, Bee and butterfly gifts and Jan’s book.

We look forward to seeing you.

The winner of our Wildlife In Your Garden Competition has been announced. The winner was Rob Adams who won a £100.00 Bellis Brothers voucher.

Highly commended was John Griffiths who won a £20.00 Strawberry Fields Restaurant voucher.

Thank you to everyone who entered.

By Glyn Smith Head Gardener at Erdigg Hall National Trust Garden

After all the rain we have been having lately, we will be busy catching up with our lawn mowing and planting. The greenhouses and cold frames at Erddig are full to bursting with young plants, just waiting to get out into their beds.

We will make sure that all are hardened off properly before planting. Hardening off is when plants are slowly subjected to cooler conditions, before trusting them to the weatherman. The usual way is to put them into a cold frame. This can be fully ventilated in the daytime, closed at night, or propped open a gap as they get used to cooler conditions. Look out for slugs and mice though, as they can easily damage young seedlings.

Plants like sweet peas, chrysanthemums and young herbaceous perennial seedlings are pretty hardy and can be planted out now, as can many vegetable plants. Some outdoor sown vegetables and salads may need thinning out. Don’t waste those lettuce seedlings, they can be planted out to give a later crop. It is not too late either to sow hardy annual seeds directly where they are to grow.

Tomato and cucumber plants are in the garden centres. They can be planted in the greenhouse now. Wait a while before planting outdoors.

As their shoots emerge, Potatoes should be earthed up. This protects them from late frosts and the potatoes will grow in the dark. Green potatoes that develop in the light are poisonous.

If you have not fed your lawns yet, now the ground is moist it will be a good time. Time too to consider controlling any moss, by raking, or with a moss killer.

Stake herbaceous perennial plants now whilst they are still small and don’t forget vegetables, like peas and beans, may need support too.

Later in the month, the spring bedding can be stripped out and composted. Tulip bulbs can be dried off in a shed and daffodils healed in a corner of the garden, or planted in natural lawn areas and borders.

Apply a preventative fungicide spray to roses and other plants before you see the diseases. Mildew and black spot will become evident soon. Look out too for aphids.

We are continuing to plant out the brassicas. Brussell sprouts should be ready to plant at the end of this month. Asparagus likes a minimum overnight temperature of 12 degrees centigrade but the average temperature for April has been about 6! This means that our Asparagus is not growing very much and we could definitely do with some more sun.

The recent rain has been very welcome and we have not had to start any irrigation systems yet.
The early varieties of strawberries are just coming into flower and we will start straw laying in the middle of this month. The gooseberries and red and black currants are all flowering, so we don’t want any night frosts over the next 10 days.

Onions have germinated but are having to compete with a flush of weed growth due to the wet weather.Potatoes are all planted and should start to emerge in the next week or so.
Whilst picking Asparagus this morning there was a skylark up above me singing his heart out. Things are looking up as we didn’t see many last year!

Did you know that sunflowers can grow upto 30cms in one day and that the tallest sunflower ever recorded was just over 7 meters?  We wonder whose is going to be the tallest.  We will keep you posted.

We must say a big thank you to each school. All the children were delightful, very enthusiastic and we thoroughly enjoyed our time spent with them.

Did you know that sunflowers can grow upto 30cms in one day and that the tallest sunflower ever recorded was just over 7 meters?  We wonder whose is going to be the tallest.  We will keep you posted.

By Glyn Smith Head Gardener at Erdigg Hall National Trust Garden

In the garden here at Erddig, the daffodils and other spring bulbs are making a gay show. Our spring bedding, of pansies and tulips is starting to flower too, as are naturalised Fritillaria meleagris, the snakes head fritillary.

We are now well into pruning our pleached lime avenues. The weather has been nice and warm and very dry. At least the grass is not growing too quickly.

Our greenhouses are filling up rapidly, not only with our summer bedding plants, but also plants one of our garden volunteers, Selwyn, is raising for a plant stall here on May 5th.

Now is the time to prune any winter and early spring shrubs that are finishing flowering, or any evergreen shrubs and hedging.

As the soil warms up it will be o.k. to sow hardy annual seeds straight outdoors into the borders. Children love to help in the garden and easy hardy annuals will give you and them a lot of pleasure when they flower. Also, grass seed will germinate readily too, so patch up any worn or dead places by giving them a really good raking, sow a little grass seed on the prepared spots, brush it in lightly and top off with a little fresh soil or compost.

Lawns will also benefit from mowing them more frequently and a dressing of spring and summer fertiliser. Be especially careful though to follow the instructions on the packet, as many accidents of scorched and burnt grass happen if it is not washed into the soil.

It is also a great time to plant shrubs and herbaceous plants, but do make sure you water them regularly, as the container compost can dry out quickly before the plants establish.

Be careful to protect those young bedding plants from early morning frosts. If they are large enough to come out of the greenhouse, harden them off in a cold frame. Close it at night and even give a little extra protection by covering them with horticultural fleece or newspaper.

In the vegetable garden keep sowing small amounts of salad crops for a long succession in about three months time, it takes 11 weeks to grow a lettuce. Sow a tub, or patch, of mixed salad seedlings to give a quick catch crop. It is also time to plant Potatoes and sow onions. It’s still not too late to sow tomato seeds, or buy plants, the little tumbling toms are great for children to grow.

With all this dry weather and hosepipe bans we need to save using as much water as we can and garden wisely. Here are my tips. Can you install a water butt for when it next rains? Can you mulch beds and borders? Do you have large tubs and planters instead of small ones that can dry out more quickly? Do you incorporate water retension granules into hanging baskets and containers? Can you save washing up and bath water to water essential plants? Can you fill every inch of visible soil to shade it and slow moisture loss? Finally, Plant some lilies, they don’t need any watering and will still flower well.

Date for your diaries. Gardeners Q&A evening in aid of Nightingale House Hospice. At Bellis’s Farm Shop & Garden Centre Thursday 19th April.