The Husband is feeling a great sense of achievement at the moment - the Wisteria has flowered for the very first time.

It doesn't sound a great thing, except we planted it as a young plant against the back wall if the house at least 12 years ago. Neither of us had any experience of this type of plant and, of course, we were both working at the time and so we left it to do its own thing. This was a big mistake as we later discovered as it needs proper pruning to shape the plant and to encourage it to start flowering.

Once we had both finished with work the Husband decided to try and get the wisteria to flower. So for a couple of years he pruned it, albeit rather tentatively. Nothing happened. The Husband got a little frustrated about this and announced that the wisteria had one more opportunity to flower or he would dig it up and throw it away. I wouldn't call his pruning this time as tentative - it was more like buchery. Real kill or cure. After he had finished this task there was very little left, it looked like a few stems and very little green.

And it worked. We've had a good first flowering from the plant. And, hopefully, we'll have more flowers on it in future years.

The Husband doesn't like gardening and doesn't do the great proportion of the work outside - he leaves that to me. One exception is pruning the roses, almost all of which were drastically cut back and are only about two feet high at the moment. The one rose he didn't prune was a climber on the wall that flanks part of one side of the garden. Here are the flowers already blossoming there or about to come out.

Chelmsford and District Gardener's Association

An interesting evening at the Gardener's Association yesterday evening and I've decided to put here what I can remember, as a record for me for the future. Everyone else reading it - I hope you find it interesting.

The title of the talk was "Compost Heaps and Practical Gardening" and it was given by a gentleman called Tony Budgen, who described his career as being a Head Gardener of a big house not too far away. His talk was very much of the practical aspects of gardening (as a matter of fact he clearly loved the subject - he didn't stop talking about it all the time he was with us.)

The idea compost heap will be a minimum of 6ft by 3 ft square with two posts placed equidistant in the center. Fill the heap as follows: 2 inch layer of vegetation, 2 inches of soil then a dusting of lime. Repeat until the heap is 4 foot high. Then pull out the posts, which will give the heap enough ventilation. After 4 months turn the heap.

In fact, of course, most of us last night (including myself) have the plasic compost bins which are Dalek shaped. He said don't forget to add spadefuls of soil to this along with the vegetation. And don't use the spent soil from pots when you've repotted the plant (or it's died) instead, as this will have no goodness in it.

The square plastic compost bins are better than the Dalek shaped ones as then compost can be removed from the little door at the base while you are still adding stuff to the top. Do not use the bins with wire netting or equivalent around the sides as the wind will just dry out the mixture and most of it just will not compost.

Any vegetation can go into the compost heap with the exception of bindweed and couch grass (guess what is found in my garden). Also you can add shredded paper, coffee grounds and tea leaves. Not egg shells as they just don't break down.

Sulphate of ammonia does exactly the same job as the much more expensive compost maker mixtures you buy in garden centers.

The way to start off Hyacynth bulbs is to plant them in a pot, put them outside and cover their pot with an upside-down one large enough to cover the pot completely so that it touches the ground all around. Sufficient water for the bulbs will go through the holes in the covering pot, which will otherwise keep off excess water. There will be no need to bring this indoors at all until the bulbs germinate and the shoots appear. Then treat them as usual.

Any seed or bulb should always be planted 3 times its own depth.

Now (February) is clean up time for herbaceous plants, so that new shoots find it easy to come to the surface. Then feed the ground. Good feeds for this are: blood, fish and bone; pelleted chicken manure; or Growmore.