Spring is (sort of) springing and the World Wide Web is alive with the chatter of horticultural experimentation, expertise and enthusiasm. It seems that gardening has found its natural online home in the form of the blog. Green fingers are tapping away at their keyboards, eager to record the rewards and disappointments, stories, conundrums and developments that are the mainstay of the ever-changing glories of a garden.

AERIAL EDIBLE GARDENING
www.aerialediblegardening.wordpress.com


Helen Babbs is a London based journalist and garden writer. A few years ago she started a small garden on her roof terrace and began an online diary to chart her progress. Helen is not only expert (and lyrical) at explaining her gardening methods, but manages to convey the poetry and beauty of a garden, no matter how small or makeshift it might be. If you don't have a garden already, we challenge you not to be inspired by Helen to start one instantly.

VERTICAL VEG
www.verticalveg.org.uk




Vertical Veg creator, Mark Ridsdill Smith, offers up a more masculine take on the rooftop gardening game, being packed with how-to guides, yield graphs (yes, graphs) and practical tips and information. He also writes brilliantly and includes lots of good pictures; all of which makes this an essential go-to blog for aspiring urban gardeners.

GARDENING WOMEN
www.gardeningwomen.com



In this blog Catherine Horwood celebrates women of horticulture from the past and the present. Until the post war period, women suffered a lack of prominence in the gardening world (although there were many active female horticulturalists) – but have been fighting back ever since. However, at the last RHS Chelsea Flower Show, all of the judges were men. This is Garden History retold through the eyes of women. Fascinating.

ONE BEAN ROW
www.onebeanrow.com



Former Gardening correspondant of the Irish Times, Jane Powers, writes this blog from her beautiful garden in Ireland. Her style of writing is convivial and funny, philosophical and informative in equal measure. Jane shares the daily delights of her garden, from frogs mating in her pond, to the smells and colours of Autumn, yet always stops to consider the wider meaning of nature’s ways, beyond the environs of her garden walls.

GUERRILLA GARDENING
www.guerrillagardening.org




Guerilla Gardening is waging a war of stealth against the neglect of public space as a place to grow plants. Here, you can learn about the art of seedbombing, get involved with illicit gardening projects in your community and read about the admirable people defying the status quo (in a nice way) across the globe and planting up any patch of orphaned land they can find.

BEN'S GARDEN BLOG
www.bensgarden.wordpress.com



The thinking gardener’s blog. Ben philosophises, satirises and celebrates all that is surreal, silly or simply of historical interest about gardens. A bona fide wordsmith, he wields the English language with dexterity and humour, weaving together stories of gardens, plants and horticultural folk from times past and present in expert style. Imagination seemed to fail him when it came to the christening of his blog, however, but this we can forgive!

GARDENS IN UNEXPECTED PLACES
www.gardensinunexpectedplaces.tumblr.com



A blog that uses a series of photographs to explore the question; what actually constitutes a garden? Taking the idea of a garden to be a space where the man-made and natural collide, this satisfyingly mind-expanding blog takes in developments in gardening technology, domestic creativity, nature and community gardening – you will find flowers and vegetables living happyily in an old drawer, a book, a child’s toy truck, to vertical gardens on buildings, in airports and much more besides.

06 March 2012