I’m a gardening expert – here’s the plant you must grow if you want your newbuild house to look good
A GARDENING expert has revealed the plant all newbuild homeowners should be growing.
Author and Instagram influencer Arthur Parkinson has offered essential advice for people, especially those in built-up towns and cities, struggling to add colour and novelty to new properties.
He says climbing plants are must-haves – looking upwards as well as along the ground.
And sweet-smelling honeysuckle is his top tip, he told the Huffington Post, in a bid to improve people’s exposure to nature.
Newbuild gardens can be difficult to sow and grow in, it has been suggested – with shallow, compacted soil blamed.
And modern developments’ fences and lawns can often look “samey”, prompting Arthur to intervene to help combat the “cardboard box”-like look of newbuild gardens.
He said climbers were best to help give new gardens a more established look.
He said: “If you don’t dress the fences, no matter what you do it will always look like a fairly new garden because those fence panels are just there – very bare-looking.
“It’s all about making the garden feel established in a shorter time frame as possible.”
He recommended honeysuckle as not only “one of the best plants for pollinators – moths can smell it from miles away at night-time”.
He added: “It’s very fragrant, so it’s lovely for us as well – and then it gives a berry in the autumn for birds.”
Honeysuckle has also been described as easy to grow, by the Royal Horticultural Society – helped if it has suitable space and shade.
They say the best results come from planting deciduous honeysuckle in winter and evergreens in autumn or spring.
Thirty-year-old Arthur has published two books, The Pottery Garden and The Flower Yard, and co-hosts with Sarah Raven the podcast Grow, Cook, Eat, Arrange.
His Instagram account sharing photos of his work in nature has 117,000 followers and he made his debut on BBC show Gardeners’ World in 2019.
Climbing plants such as honeysuckle and clematis have previously been recommended by another gardening expert as a way to boost your home’s value, improving the feel of privacy.
Celebrity gardener David Domoney, presenter of ITV’s Love Your Garden, is also a fan.
He described them as a good way to distract the eye from less pleasant sights such as rotten fences.
And a retired couple in Bromley, south-east London, have covered their home in climbing plants – not only making the house a popular local attraction but also keeping it warm in winter to bring down heating bills.
Other green-fingered gardeners have told of how they managed to transform outdoor areas of their newbuild homes.
They include first-time buyers using bargains from retailers B&M and a TikToker who replaced drab soil and rubble with grass, plants and furniture from Dunelm, Asda and Aldi.
Meanwhile, a Twitter account dedicated to exposing poor newbuild homes has just criticised the poor design of fences which fail to show any greenery.
The latest advice comes after research from house-builders Redrow suggested one in four Brits have seen no worms (27 per cent), butterflies (26 per cent) or snails (24 per cent) within the past month.
And most recent government figures say 46.9million residents in England now live in urban areas compared to just 9.7million in rural.