Urban garden hints and tips

An urban garden should be an oasis of green calm in the centre of our town or city, but to create that perfect dream of calm and space we have to contend with a range of problems:

• Pollution – there are many forms of pollution; petrol and fumes, dust and dirt, rubbish blown or thrown into our gardens – they can all seem designed to make our plants weakly and coated with soot and our spaces grubby and full of litter. However there are great plants to stop this kind of thing. Berberis, for example makes a great hedge – the variegated types are perfect for not showing the soot and grime that mar so many roadside plants, and their very prickly stems will deter litter droppers.
• Light – in most towns and cities it never gets really dark. So what, you say? Well this affects our plants. Often it means they come into bloom earlier than they should, because plants have two clocks. One clock measures temperature and the other measures light hours. If the local 7-11 or all night petrol station is beaming light into our gardens, our flowers will think it’s time to blossom. You need to ensure that plants that get lots of night light are also protected from chill spring winds and air frosts, then you can enjoy their early blooms.
• Birds and foxes – pigeons and starlings can tear our flowers and foxes, although they look beautiful, are a total nuisance in the way they turn over bins and scavenge through flower beds, let alone the noise they make. The simplest answer to bird predation is to put up a bird table – if you feed them bird food they won’t take your flowers apart! While you may not be allowed to raise your fences to keep foxes out, most councils will allow you to erect trellis or supports for climbing plants and if these extend to six feet, foxes won’t be able to jump them unless there’s a convenient coal bunker or other structure on the far side for them to launch from.

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