Andrew Staib

The Rare Plants Man When he could hardly move around his Henfield back garden, Steve Law’s decided to relocate his nursery of Rare Plants. With a generous start up grant from one of his gardening clients, Miss Green, he moved to Small Dole in 2011 and built a whole succession of sheds, polytunnels and raised beds to commit to his passion- rare plants. He is still moved today when he talks about the help Miss Green gave him. “She was 97 and loved her plants. I couldn’t have done it without her”. Working as a gardener half the week, he [...]

Giving your garden the Spring it deserves April is the busiest time of the year so there are lots of Shoulds in April. You should have cleared the last of the Winter debris and now begin sowing and planting in earnest. You should be thinking of planting up Summer bulbs and bedding. You should be putting down the last of your mulch on beds to prevent Spring weeds. You should be thinking of buying in some colourful plants for the late Spring and Summer. BUT- You should also, like an enormous bath sponge, be soaking up the beauty of nature. [...]

Leonardslee Gardens To Open Again The greatest woodland garden in the UK is set to reopen in West Sussex with an excitement for nature lovers akin to Willy Wonka opening up his doors. With spectacular displays of Azaleas and Rhododendrons, Leonardslee is world famous. Andrew Staib, principle garden designer for Glorious Gardens Sussex, goes on a tour of the gardens with Head Gardener, Ray Abrahams. For 8 years, the 240 acres of Leonardslee has been a neglected place. But when Penny Streeter bought the property and gardens in 2017 work started immediately. Last year Ray Abrahams was brought in to [...]

Brightening up February February can be a joyless month in the garden. Andrew Staib from Glorious Gardens takes a look at plants that will light up your garden. February is a tricky month. Sometimes clear days have us running out to turn over the soil and dig in some compost, other days have us sheltering indoors looking out of a rainy window. If you are one of those gardeners who don’t start visiting their local nursery until Spiring and then buying the flowering plants you see, you will miss out on the January and February performers. We can embolden our [...]

How can an ancient Chinese philosophy of life help us appreciate our gardens this January? Most simply, the theory of Yin and Yang describes a world being made up not of opposite and opposing forces, but an experience in life where events and things are actually connected, sometimes complimentary and more often interdependent. So Winter is not the opposite of Summer but they are two sides of the same coin that transform into each other and rely on each other. One is not bad and the other good, but that they are two experiences that we can bring ourselves into [...]

What’s it like to run a small garden nursery? Garden designer Andrew Staib talks to Garden Sage Nursary about the joys and difficulties of running their own nursery. It was a great leap of faith three years ago when Ed Nugent and his wife Josie decided to set up their own nursery in Hassocks. It was 2015 and they knew both they were in the shadow of two large commercial garden centres and despite a life time working in retail horticulture, they had never had to put their own savings into such a venture. It was a risk that has [...]

Designing your garden this Autumn Autumn is the best time to design your garden, to give it a re vamp and to rigorously look your outdoor space and make some creative changes. As we have had such a warm Autumn so far you can still see the echoes of Summer planting, late summer and Autumn growth i going strong, and as the weather gets colder and as you clear away more and more of this year’s debris, the underlining lines and shapes of the garden will reveal themselves. We beg our own garden design clients to start the garden design [...]

Designing your garden this Autumn Autumn is the best time to design your garden! You can still see the echoes of Summer planting, late summer and Autumn growth is still often going strong, and as the weather gets colder and as you clear away more and more of this year’s debris, the underlining lines and shapes of the garden reveal themselves. We beg our own garden design clients to start the garden design process in the Autumn! If you start now you can have all the time you need to spend the Autumn assessing what worked in the Summer, what [...]