Gardening books
As we started Gardenadvice almost 8 years ago we wondered at the time what the future would hold and if gardening books would decline in popularity. However 8 years later and we have the answer, both gardening books and gardening content on web sites have found there place. with gardening books becoming more popular than ever in providing inspiration and information for your garden.
With this in mind we have revamped and relaunched our gardening books review section to provide a source of recommended books on a wide range of gardening subjects. Below is some of the first gardening books we have reviewed.

Bugs, slugs and other Invaders - Sometimes its just no fun being a gardener all those aphids, slugs and other pests waiting to destroy your hard work and efforts. However that could all change if you read a book click here to read the full gardening book review.

Garden Design Details - Often the first problem when designing any garden is finding the original inspiration the first founding idea, a theme. Its hard with any garden design but with gardens over an acre it can seem an impossible task to get started. click here to read the full gardening book review.

Grow Your Own Veg Carol Klein - For anyone hoping to start growing there own vegetables Grow Your Own Veg written by Carol Klein, published by Mitchell Beazley, is the ideal place to start. click here to read the full gardening book review.

Wildlife gardening courses and advice in changing times

Its interesting to see how popular creating and designing gardens for wildlife has now become in the UK over the last few years. Gardens created around wildlife is not a new style or development it has been around since gardens were first developed. The diversity of plants in a garden has naturally encouraged and attracted a wide selection of the wildlife local to the garden.
When I first started over 25 years ago every garden we created seem to be plagued with house sparrows and it would have been hard to imagine at the time these small birds would 25 years later be in such a decline. In addition to this other birds and small manuals see to have taken advantage of gardens and adapted so that gardens have become a strong hold for many species.
It also amazing to see the growth in questions we now get from our members and viewers requesting information about wild flowers and setting up a garden focused on wild life in response to this we have started a number or one day Wildlife gardening course and created a special edition of our MyGardenTeam service for people how wish to focus there gardens on wildlife.

Virgin trains - How to destroy a brand and a great lesson for us in customer services. Committed to the use of public transport we have over the last five years extensively used the train network in the UK and France, however recently we have decided to stop using Virgin trains as the service has become so bad it is now unworkable. Whilst I am sure it all looks fine on paper with a large percentage of trains arriving on time and the profits rolling in. In other areas such as customer satisfaction and in our opinion customer safety they are sadly lacking.

I should imaging in years to come virgin trains will be held as one of those examples they use in business schools to show how easy it is to destroy the good name of a brand.

Virgin Trains leaving London Euston are normally packed, indeed its interesting to watch the scramble of people who rush to board once the trains platform is announced. I have no doubt that adding an additional carriages to the busy trains or even extra trains to the schedule is an option, however as most people have at this stage already paid for a return ticket these options are not acceptable to virgin as they would simply eat into virgin trains profits.

Many of the trains leaving London are largely over crowded, apart from the fact that customers have in the main paid a not inconsiderable amount of money for a ticket for a journey that might last a couple of hours or more. The safety aspect of passages should also be taken into account, on a recent trip the train was so full of people standing that the trains staff found it impossible to open the shop for almost an hour whilst the staff struggled due the shear number of people standing in the shop area and throughout the train, this simply cannot be safe in the event of the train derailing or coming to a sudden holt. This undoubtedly caused a panic with the trains staff not because of safety grounds but the simple fact that no shop means less profits. However the position seem to be recovered as within 15 mins of the shop opening had simply run out of small change due to the volume of business, this I have no doubt was brought about by the excessive use of the heating system in the train producing a hot dry uncomfortable environment which is ideal if you own a shop selling cold drinks.

Our substantial investment in traveling with virgin trains over the last five years has produced some interesting memories such as the day a busy weekend train was cancelled and the customers of that train were told to use the next train and just to help matters along they cancelled the reservation system resulting in some very angry people just to add to the customer experience. The only other event that surpasses this is then they allowed people to board a train before switching on the reservation system and then switching it on 10 minutes later again causing a great deal of distress among the passages and staff. We actually complained on this occasion and were told by Barry the train manager that if we did not shut up are day would get a whole lot worse as we would be put off at the next stop. But who can blame the poor guy the stress he must have gone through with all the complaints is enough to drive anyone over the edge.

There can only be one thing worse than being a virgin train customer thats being a virgin train employee, my bet is that it must be worse than being a former British rail employee with all the hassle they must get.

Well at least its a profitable business, we now this because Mr Branson has just decided to give a large amount of the profits away to help the environment. Perhaps using those profits to create a better service to encourage people to use the trains more and would be a far more effective way to help the environment. Although this would not have the same PR impact as simply doing the job you are paid to do.

Its not all bad news its caused us to take a long hard look at the way we treat our own customers and virgin trains for us have set the lower end of the bench mark for customer service. We Know if we ever reach a level service as bad as we have experienced with virgin trains then we are in trouble not to mention the fact we just do not want to treat people as badly as virgin trains do. So if you ever feel GardenAdvice have given you a bad customer experiance then tell us we might be as bad as virgin trains, you will be amazed the effect it will have.

Our cutting edge research on earthworms

When we tell people about our research project on worms they are never quite sure if we are joking or not.
Well we are not joking, most people are surprised to find out how many of the questions and advice we are asked for includes answers that suggests increasing the population of earthworms. Here are just a few to give you an idea
Garden drainage - earthworms help improve general soil drainage with all the holes and burrows they create
Soil compaction - earthworms help stop soil compaction by introducing organic matter into the soil.
Soil water availability to plants - earthworm holes and burrows enable plants roots to grow deeper in the soil and the organic matter incorporated into the soil by the earthworms helps supply water to these roots
soil texture problems - earthworms help maintain soil texture in areas of heavy annual rain fall and areas of heavy wear.

Currently research by most organizations on worms is being concentrated on the use of various species of worms to help breakdown organic household waste to recycle it as an useable organic compound and remove the strain on land fill sites by reducing the amount of waste that needs to be disposed of.

Our research is focusing on the production of inexpensive quantities of earthworms to be placed directly into the soil to help with plant growth, drainage, and general soil cultivation.
Watch the main web site to see how we get on www.gardenadvice.co.uk

Climate change - Time to educate people how to adapt

Its amazing to consider that every day we are being told that the UK as a small Island on the planet we can make a difference in controlling climate change. Although we might be able to set a good example our good intentions with regards to the reduction in carbon emissions are greatly over shadowed by actions of larger populations such as China and the US. Secondly mankind's largely successful efforts to control nature must now have meet there match with climate change and the universal forces that drive these constant ongoing changes.
With major climate change being inevitable within the next 50 years it is surely time we focused our efforts on how to deal with extremes in climate change and education on how best to live with these effects. In short we must learn to adapt to the changing conditions.
At GardenAdvice.co.uk we see the effects of climate change every day. The most obvious sign is the daily questions we receive from our members about such subjects as land drainage and new pest problems from pests arriving from overseas that seem to be able to survive in our changing climate.
GardenAdvice.co.uk response to this need is to make climate change education the centre of our schools garden initiative by extending our education remit to cover climate change by providing each school in the scheme with a weather station and educational material to help the students understand such subjects as ultra violet light levels, ground water levels and weather systems. With the ultimate aim of how to interoperate this information for every day living. Such as precautions to protect yourself on days with high ultra violet light levels.

Mission Critical - It could be a Lamista Indian in Peru
When we started GardenAdvice.co.uk we had one main objective in mind, to simply provide people with advice on gardening. We imagined at the time that this advice would be on such subjects as how to sow a lawn, prune a rose etc. However we soon had questions and requests for advice from all over the world, in fact today we have members and regular advice request from every country around the globe.
The advice we provide to members and viewers in countries outside Europe and America often takes the form of information about growing new crops or practical advice on such subjects as how to stop erosion.
In the early days we had some interesting days looking up all the countries people had requested advice from and until we became used to it leaving your desk at the end of the day having often been twice around the world with the location of the people we had provided advice to was a strange feeling.
If you ever use our online advice services and we take some time getting back to you then it is more than likely than not we are on a mission critical for one of our member creating some advice that might just have all our resources tighed up for a few days possible providing advice that might led to a life changing effect for a small farmer in India or a lamista indian in Peru.
So if we do not answer straight away then you can always email us again its not that your request for advice is not important to us, its just some requests take priority.

Downloadable Video - the way forward

As most of our members and viewers are new to gardening they spend a lot of time researching and gaining information on the main web site GardenAdvice.co.uk Back in 2000 we started with a text base site that has always worked well. However as the internet and other media technologies have progressed it is now possible for us to deliver information to our viewers and members through downloadable videos over the internet.
In 2000 we had a very clear vision of how the internet would develop around the supply of information leading to informed consumer purchases. Our vision also predicates in the same way radio has been diluted by television that text based content for information on the internet will be firstly supplemented and then replaced by video.
Over the next 6 months we shall be publishing our first 500 downloadable video filmed and produced over the last 3 years. These downloadable videos are designed to supplement our current text based information.
To watch one of our downloadable video in a windows media format 25MB click here

Your very own garden expert online


After 3 years developing the concept of a personal garden expert service on the internet August 2006 became the first month the service was released to a limited number of our members. The new service is called MyGardenTeam

Together with your very own gardening expert on the MyGardenTeam team you will plan the objectives for your gardening project. You might want to rescue an existing garden which has turned into a jungle or start a new garden from stratch. Then your MyGardenTeam expert will create a plan of action just for you taking into account your objectives and the time and resourses you have available.

MyGardenTeam service also provides you will our ground breaking genesis4 online software combined with wordpress weblog software.

Hosted on the MyGardenTeam servers you are able to -
view your personal gardening plan and calendar created for you by your personal gardening expert containing tasks such as times to pruning or the best time to plant trees and shrubs.
Calendar tasks contain links to additional information on the scheduled task and in many cases free "how to" downloadable gardening videos. Create a diary record of your progress throughout the year
Set up appointments with your garden expert to discuss gardening projects and tasks or to receive advice.
Create your own gardening knowledge database by requesting advice and information through the online software.
Create an online album of your garden containing your pictures and video footage up to 100MB with 2GBmonthly transfer per month.
Invite your friends and family to view your online album containing pictures and videos

The MyGardenTeam service enables our experts to provide a more comprehensive and ongoing form of help and advice to the keen gardener who is developing there garden over a period of time. So far the most popular part of the service has been the calendar facility with a personal RSS feed providing a simple notification of when to prune plants as well as other gardening tasks such as feeding lawns and sowing seeds.
Autum 2007 should see the final roll out of the service with a wireless plant label development and local reporting weather stations which will enable the service to provide task information based on local light levels, soil moisture and temperatures levels together with air temperatures. Its a simple idea that provides you with your own gardening expert in the form of a personal gardening assistant online.
Click here to see an example

Our commitment to the Schools Wildlife Project - Stage Two In May 2004 after 12 months planning we stared our school wildlife project as an extension of our Young Gardeners club. The aim of the scheme is through the establishment of a number of schools wildlife gardens and the creation of online software to encourage students to educate themselves in three main areas -
The use of the internet for research
Publish information and research on the internet
Communicate and exchange information with other students on joint projects
With the first stage of the scheme now complete the second stage is to extend the schools involved to take in a number of schools from around the world including China and India.