Lara Jane Hurley's Page

I've started a website and have discovered that it's not as easy as Phil makes it look... I've long thought that there is a lack of information about landscape management out there on t'interweb and have decided to put up information about different landscape types, management and maintenance. It's aimed at the general public - people who run landscapes for voluntary groups, schools etc. and it's very much in its infancy. Please take a look and tell me what you think …

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Two small ponds...very small ponds that could be described as puddles, are in our garden. They are of the pre-formed plastic ilk and we were given them both free. One is thriving and one isn't although they sit, inches apart in the border and received the same treatment - oxygenators, marginals, water... One teems with wildlife, the other seems bereft and we have cleaned it out and started again,… Continue

Wildflowers on the Green

Why is creating a wildflower meadow like baking the perfect sponge? Because to achieve a pretty, evenly mixed and diverse meadow there needs to be a combination of the right ingredients, timing and temperature, just like baking.

This year many people who use my local Millennium Green are wondering what has happened to the wildflower meadow. Where are the flowers? Why is there a lot of grey-green stuff that looks like a weed?

Unlike most ovens, nature is… Continue

Back in Suffolk, an old friend of mine (she's not that old, I hasten to add) used to take all her grey water from the kitchen and bathroom and run it out into a series of ponds in her garden before using it to water her plants. Living up here in the north west, it's usually raining and the need for such measures has never arisen. Recently though, things, they are a droopin'.

Yesterday, we siphoned off the bathwater for the first time, leaving the rubber ducks and my son high and dry. We… Continue