Bespoke conservatories offer both beauty and functionality. Matching your existing home design, these elegant structures are sure to add value to your to property and enjoyment to your life. For gardeners, they also offer an excellent opportunity to extend your plants' growing seasons. Here are some tips to get the maximum growth form you plants through the year.



Spring (March - May)

Starting the growing season off right will be crucial to having a healthy and beautiful garden year round and a good soil mixture is the key to doing this. Surprisingly, the secret to healthy plant growth is to insure that the plant's roots get enough air. A strong root base in crucial to growing large plants and tightly packed soil will inhibit root growth. Without a large root base, a plant will remain small no matter how good the rest of its growing conditions are.

Of course, a plant also needs to extract nutrients from the soil, so a mixture of good soil and air is what you are after. This can be accomplished by combining potting soil with filler material. Small gravel works well, but can make for heavy, difficult to move pots. An excellent and cheap alternative is old Styrofoam packaging. Crumbling up some packing peanuts and mixing them with potting soil offers a solution that is both healthy for the plant and light enough for easy rearranging.

Summer (June - August)

With the long, warm summer days comes abundant plant growth. As your plants reach for the sky you'll want to tie tender stems to garden stakes to insure the plant continues to grow straight. Keep a close eye on climbing plants to make sure they aren't falling off their trellises.

Unfortunately, with you warm weather also comes increased pest activity. Keep a close eye for aphids, spider mites, and other pests and treat plants as needed. A healthy and environmentally friendly alternative to pesticides is to introduce natural predators, such as lady bugs, into your conservatory.

Autumn (September - November)

In most conservatory gardens, Autumn is the time when the most plants with be in bloom. To insure maximum bloomage you will want to water your plants often and fertilize them 2 to 3 times a month. Adding a powdered fertilizer to your watering can if an easy way to accomplish this feat.

Autumn is an excellent time to take clippings of your favorite flowers and enjoy them inside your home. A regular pruning of dieing flowers will also encourage new buds to form.

As the temperature cools in late October and November, summer flowering species will begin to slow down and require less water. However, autumn flowing species will remain in full bloom, requiring as much water as ever.

Winter (December - February)

Although the outside temperatures are plummeting, temperatures inside your bespoke conservatory will remain moderate and thus the growing season will be extended considerably. Plants that would normally die back in October or November can continue to be vibrant all the way into January.

When your autumn species finally start to taper off, you can still get some vibrant color from winter flowering bulbs like Narcissus and Amaryllis. Be sure to trim back your plants after they go into hibernation so that they'll be ready when the growing season starts up again.