Five Minute Gardener

Five Minute Gardener Passionate food and flower grower, sharing tips & tricks, and ideas to get children gardening

01/08/2026

One of my favourite plants to stumble across in summer… meadowsweet

If you find damp riverbanks or woodland edges filled with vanilla, honey or almond scented flowers, you’ve probably found it. Crush a flower gently between your fingers and you’ll notice a sweet aroma that’s hard to mistake

In Celtic folklore, meadowsweet was one of the three most sacred herbs. It was scattered across floors during celebrations (a strewing herb), used in beer/mead and was believed to bring peace, joy and protection to the home

Why is it worth knowing?

🌼 Makes a lovely floral tea
🥂 Adds a vanilla or almond flavour to cordials and syrups
🌿 Has been used to soothe digestion and support aches and pains thanks to its naturally occurring salicylates (main ingredient in aspirin)
🪰 can be used as an insect repellent especially for flies

As always, only forage where you’re 100% confident of identification, take only what you need, and leave plenty behind for wildlife.

Have you ever used meadowsweet before?

24/07/2026

A quick harvest after popping down to tick off some quick jobs in my garden and I noticed something ready to harvest

These are snacking cucumbers which I decided to grow because we are always buying these for after school snacks and they are a One Minute Gardener favourite

I bought this as a plug plant from .co.uk and they have grown really well despite the very hot weather recently. I knew the plant had dozens of young fruit but didn’t realise these were hiding under a leaf (from my yacon plants)

The variety is called Quick Snack and they were eaten very quickly indeed!

22/07/2026

I spotted this incredible hummingbird hawk moth feeding on the soapwort growing beside my chicken coop. It’s the first one I’ve ever knowingly seen in my garden.

Despite the name, it’s actually a moth. It hovers like a hummingbird, beats its wings around 70 times per second, and uses its long tongue (proboscis) to drink nectar without ever landing.

I noticed how much it loved my soapwort flowers. Flowers with long, tubular blooms are perfect because their nectar sits deep inside where shorter-tongued insects can’t easily reach.

If you’d like to encourage hummingbird hawk moths into your garden, try growing plants like:
🌸 Soapwort
🌸 Red valerian
🌸 Buddleia
🌸 Verbena bonariensis
🌸 Honeysuckle
🌸 Lavender
🌸 Phlox

Have you ever been lucky enough to see one?

13/07/2026

RHS Chelsea is famous for is big show gardens that are meant to inspire other designers and gardeners to try something different or look at your space in a different way

Around 2016 there was a garden highlight community spaces that had a wheelie bin shelter turned into a planter. That idea played around in my head for a couple of years until I finally just built something

This year I was really inspired by all of the water features and different ways that water was embraced by so many of the designers. While I would love a water rill flowing water along the path, it’s not practical for us at the moment

This water bowl idea from the garden designed by packs a lot of impact in such a small space. So with the One Minute Gardener’s help, we set about finding a suitable container, filling it and decorating nicely with some cornus kousa flowers and a rose

What do you think? Very low effort and a fun way to spend five minutes in the garden

09/07/2026

We just found a mushroom that was supposedly ‘too rude’ for the Victorians… 🍄😂

Meet the Common stinkhorn, one of the most unforgettable fungi!

According to some tales from Victorian times, people would secretly collect and destroy these mushrooms before women and children could stumble across them, all because of their rather… suggestive appearance. Whether that happened everywhere is up for debate, but I don’t see anything rude about this mushroom 😇

A few fascinating facts:
🍄 It doesn’t always look like this, it starts as a small white ‘egg’ and can have a white ‘net’ coming from the top
🤢 That slimy bump on the top isn’t rotting, it’s a spore filled slime that smells like rotting meat
🪰 The smell attracts flies, which happily carry the spores away to spread the fungus
🌳 You’ll often find them in woodland, mulch and leaf litter, especially after warm, wet weather

Have you ever come across one before, or is this your first rather awkward introduction?

03/07/2026

This is pineapple w**d… and yes, it really does smell like pineapple! 🍍

You’ll probably have walked past it countless times without noticing. It thrives where many plants struggle, happily growing in compacted soil, along paths, and in cracks of concrete

Despite its name, pineapple w**d is actually a wild relative of chamomile. Its sweet, fruity aroma makes it a brilliant foraged ingredient, and over the next few weeks we’ll be using it in a few simple recipes, including a delicious herbal tea

Have you ever stopped to smell pineapple w**d?

🍍 Naturally sweet with pineapple aroma
🌼 A wild relative of chamomile
☕ Makes a fragrant and caffeine free herbal tea
🐝 Great for supporting pollinators when left to flower

ForagedFood

21/06/2026

Believe or not but tucked inside an industrial site in Nottingham, England, is a woodland filled which ancient trees from Sherwood Forest

The Major Oak is a tree that every kid in Nottinghamshire learns about as the legends say Robin Hood & his Merry Men would hide in it from the Sheriff’s men! The tree has stood for over 1,000 years but in 2026 it had been officially announced as being dead as no leaves have grown this year. It predated Columbus visiting the Americas, outlasted the Incan empire and has now slipped away into legend

This tree next to me is a genuine cutting of the Major Oak which means genetically it is the same tree, was gifted to this company to help this ancient tree live on. It sits next to around 50 other clones of ancient trees from Sherwood Forest.
I would have posted this video sooner but needed to spend time trawling through the company archives to learn more and prove that this really is the Major Oak and I’ve not been lying all these years. I’ve got black & white photos of company trips to visit the Major Oak in the Sherwood back as early as 1896 and more in 1925

The Major Oak is a tree that has captured the imagination of people for centuries, hopefully the legend can live on in this tree

Maybe I should share a video of what I do with the acorns I collect from this tree 🌱

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