The Winter Garden

Once the last of your summer glass-grown crops have been harvested and the garden outside is winding down for winter, don’t abandon the greenhouse until spring. Make it earn its keep over the winter months by maximising the extra space it offers. Even if you don’t heat the greenhouse during winter, just by virtue of being enclosed by glass its interior will be a degree or two warmer than outside. That may not sound like much, but it could be all you need to nurse borderline hardy plants through the colder months – many need only a minimum of 3°C to tick over, as long as they are kept dry. And it also enables much more: an unheated greenhouse can be used to prepare winter blooms for the house, to start off seeds for next year, to propagate plants