Gardening for beginners: where to start

Gardening is a rewarding and fruitful experience, and we applaud you if you’re about to dig deep into the world of growing your own produce, flowers, shrubs and trees. To help you transition from [...]

New Zealand wildlife is more mild than wild. Our native creatures need some encouragement to overcome their shyness and mingle with us human types. But the effort to lure native wildlife into [...]

As we wrote in this post:  raised garden beds have many winning qualities:   They fit neatly into confined spaces They look so good that they become features in your garden You can control [...]

When most people around the world think of Christmas, they picture snowflakes, snowmen,Santa’s sleigh ploughing through the snow… all very, very cold things! Here in New Zealand, things are [...]

A homemade gift is a thoughtful gift. It shows the recipient that you have put some real effort into making it instead of picking up something off the shelf. Anyone can do that! But it takes a [...]

If you’re stuck for Christmas gift ideas, this little tongue twister might help: “Garden lovers love gorgeous garden gifts.”  In other words, give a gorgeous garden gift to a garden lover and [...]

The peg might seem like a small and humble piece of timber but as every big job starts with one, its importance can never be overstated. The peg can be a strong support when you’re concreting, or [...]

This is a blog post about staking trees…or not staking trees. It might seem that all young trees need extra support but in fact, most trees don’t need to be staked. Staking trees that don’t need [...]

Cucumbers really ARE cool. They’re the subtle and refreshing taste of summer that we all love, either in a salad, on a sandwich, or even in a gin and tonic. (Just a slice in your G&T mind [...]

Like most Kiwis, MLC Group love tomatoes! Tomato sandwiches fill our lunchboxes. We make tomato relish at morning tea time. And when we play cricket at afternoon tea time, we use a tomato as a [...]