I sometimes go on about how garden writing compares to, for instance, cookery writing, car writing, property or architecture writing. This top 10 looks at newspapers only - because their editors should know better.

Here are some reasons why garden writing doesn't always stand up.

Use more than one source. This piece on Phytophthora ramorum in the Daily Telegraph by Ursula Buchan uses the National Trust too much as a source. The feature is a good backgrounder but doesn't include the views of growers or Defra and looks to be in response to a piece in The Guardian that is more critical of the National Trust. I do like the box in the Telegraph piece by Tony Kirkham on what trees to plant.

Talk to the subject. This piece, again in the Daily Telegraph, is a question-and-answer with Dr David Hessayon. The format does not give an opportunity for follow-up questions. In this piece, it could lead to accusations of greenwashing. Call, or better still, talk to your subject face-to-face.

Get an original and interesting angle and do more than fill space. Monty Don is a high-profile gardener. But Don's piece on how he likes to wear tweed in the garden smacks of being a little less than enough for a two-page piece. 

Commission a writer with something to say. Reality show winner Ben Fogle and ex pop star Alex James are celebs. They write countryside columns. Fogle lives in South Kensington. James farms - so he can write about it.

Ask some tough questions. Matthew Wilson's piece on Alan Titchmarsh is a little matey. Hence, the reader discovers little about the subject. 

Go beyond what the press office says. This piece on Toby Buckland in the Sunday Times is a bit like this piece in HW. Without the interesting bits. Because the BBC press office got involved.

Do your research. This piece on Toby Buckland fails to mention peat-subject of an hour long special from Buckland out a fortnight later. The profile tells you little you wouldn't already know if you had read previous pieces.

Keep some perspective. This profile of Monty Don is cringeworthy in its worshipping of the evangelical gardener. 

Be topical. A nice feature on guerrilla gardener Richard Reynolds by Pattie Barron in Evening Standard Homes & Property this spring (no link available). But almost a year after similar pieces appeared when guerrilla gardening was briefly fashionable (among journalists).

Topical should be new too. "At about this time of year I write much the same as I wrote at this time last year".Snowdrops in Feb anyone? Compare Spectator 2009 and Independent 2003.

Avoid clichés. Dan Pearson:"My own sap is up. Gardeners can feel the sap rising." Observer 22/2/2009

Guardian gardening blog February 2009: "The sap is rising."

Monty Don 6/2/05 Observer: "Spring just around the corner, gardeners can feel the sap rising."

Sunday Times Rachel de Thame 6/4/2008 ... "I feel the sap rising and am eager to start work in earnest."

Finally, this piece by Zoe Williams marks the nadir of allotment blogs. Like when Jenny Powell decided she was a garden designer in a makeover show, you knew the craze was near the end. An associate says the recession will hopefully kill off ill-informed commentators like Williams. BTW, the comments box is the place to ask: what does he know anyway, who does he think he is? And maybe refer to pieces I've done you don't think much of.

Some politics this week. Who said this wasn't  a serious strand of the Hort Week output. But to start with, utter trivia.

1. My colleague Magda Ibrahim interviewed Chelsea Flower Show designer Luciano Guibbilei last week. Lucy's PR people suggested lunch at swanky Tom’s Kitchen, then almost as posh Cheyne Walk Brasserie. They ended up in Starbucks for coffee and soup. Meanwhile, Horticulture Week features editor Gavin McEwan is to appear on Mastermind. Talking of restaurants, we took new son William Gilbert to Jamie Oliver's in Kingston last week. Very good on fresh homegrown produce etc. He goes to nice restaurants at 17 days. Took me about 17 years to go to my first one. Bertoletti's in Carlisle. My colleague Dominic Mills was there (not in Bertolettis-in Jamie's).

2. On my allotment last week a neighbour said to me: "Can you turn your back a moment. I might like to have a wee." I wasn’t even looking that way.

3. Met House of Lords leader Baroness Royall last week at All-Party Hortculture Group 10th anniversary celebration. Group organiser Mark Glover was rehearsing salsa moves in the corner. Baroness Royall, an ex Neil Kinnock advisor, had Kinnock books on her shelves – but best was Banksy and a Mao biog. She has big garden in Forest of Dean. HTA director general David Gwyther made a joke he said I should put on the blog. He went to the House of Lords toilet and a sign said peers this way. Does anyone know any better gags?

4. Gordon Brown doesn’t like gardening but wife Sarah Brown does. She's asked the All-Party hort group for advice ahead of a trip round garden for hort loving MPs.

5. Former All-Party hort group chair David Marshall has moved to New Zealand. Marshall resigned as an MP because of depression partly caused by stories that he employed his wife and daughter in secretary/researcher roles.

6. Landscape Institute types are calling boss Alistair McCapra Alistair McCrapa because of the institute's £900,000 debts and redundancy programme. LI members get their weekly news from Hort Week on this.

7. Gardener's World presenter Joe Swift told me last week that he has had enough of evangelical, preachy gardeners. Who could he be referring to?

8. Talking of GW, producer Andy Vernon won’t do an interview. Strange that he hasn’t time but presenters Joe Swift, Carol Klein and Toby Buckland do. Is it because they have books to plug? Seeing we pay for Gardener’s World shouldn’t the staff try and promote their programmes if people ask?

9. Chelsea Flower Show news. Wesley Kerr is not reporting for the BBC. The BBC is cutting costs by not sending Kerr overseas to report on the show gardens of Australia, West Indies etc as he has done for eight years. Chelsea will also not be broadcast in HD. But seven staff relocated to Birmingham (Chelsea coverage has been shifted from London to Brum from this year). Will the move use up savings made?

10. Blue Peter gardener expose Chris Collins 'Gardening saved me from a life of drugs' was a great Friday feature in the Sun. Sun gardening writers Peter Seabrook and and Steve and Val Bradley found the story. Imagine the garden writers of any other national getting a story as good as this-it would never happen. Collins is being called gardening's Amy Winehouse by cynical hacks.

11. BONUS late news: Michelle Obama will begin digging up a patch of the South Lawn on Friday to plant a vegetable garden, the first at the White House since Eleanor Roosevelt’s victory garden in World War II. There will be no beets — the president does not like them — but arugula will make the cut.

Duty log mental:

One wonders just how long the bosses at Hort Week can put up with the antics of their incumbent deputy editor Matthew Appleby and his half hearted attempts of humour and satire (at the expense of others) on his weekly 'top ten things' blog.

Apart from the fact that I don't always understand his cryptic rants I am getting more than slightly irritated at the poor presentation, lack of formatting on the page, different fonts and the awful way that the photos - ALL of irregular sizes- are sprawled all over the place.

If HW think that they are going to appeal to the masses and cater for the increasing gap between failing print revenues and digital media with this kind of pseudo-journalism then they are sadly mistaken.

Guess who? Winner gets a bottle of Asti Spumante.

Just another 10 garden things. May have to change the format soon. getting boring. But there are prizes now (booze). See No.7

1. About turns. Diarmuid Gavin: “Our Chelsea sponsor has pulled out. We’ll ring you back to say who it was.” Half hour later: “We weren’t ever going to do Chelsea. We’re concentrating on Grand Designs garden.” Gavin's 2007 sponsor have denied it is them.

2. James Wong-Kew graduates sniffy about his qualifications from the botanic gardens that he always mentions. Says he trained to master’s level. Umm. Kew says Wong did an masters in ethnobotany at University of Kent, which is run in collaboration with  the botanic garden. Best to check. No-one else bothered.

3. Evening Standard Homes & Property has shut down. Does this mean the end of inimitable garden hack Pattie Barron? Probably  not as the supplement will be incorporated into main paper and on the web.

4. Also Country Gardener is closing after this issue. Thanks to Martyn Cox for this. But Gardens Monthly is strong despite dropping use of ABC figures and adverse industry rumours.

5. Garden designer Tony Heywood is showing art at FAS Gallery in New Bond Street opening this week. Watch out for his mad designs across the press.

6. Peter Seabrook is featuring on Bank of the Sun £2 notes. They give money off Radcliffe’s Pinot Grigio. Page three girl Keeley Hazell is on the other side of the notes. Beauty and the beast ...fill in own caption at bottom etc.

7. Sir Tom Hunter and Aldo Zilli. Lookalikes. Insert witty caption at the bottom. Prize for the best of a bottle of Prosecco.

8. I note that other writers have picked up my 16 February post mentioning Top Gear’s James May and the plasticine Morph garden. Well done. A month late. News? One was Robin Parker, late of Retail Newsagent and then Haymarket.

9. Metro celebrated 10 years with a story on how to make your copy of the free paper into a garden. Except the details revealed that it meant you had print off the e-Metro on environmentally friendly ink (wasting yet more paper) and get it impregnated with wild flower seeds from Creative Paper Wales. The picture Metro used showed a box full of shop-bought pansies and primroses.

10. The RHS planned a pre-Chelsea trip to Hillier and Knoll Gardens this week. But no hacks could be bothered signing up. It's not like many garden writers are over-run with work. Why can they not do some research and actually visit nurseries? Because they are lazy and passion-free I'd suggest. I'd add HW has been to both Hillier and Knoll is recent months.

1. Media types are dubbing Monty Don 'horticulture's Jade Goody' for last Sunday's Observer piece about Mont's stroke.

2. The latest Private Eye features an email from a Gardener's World researcher asking colleagues in Bristol if they know of a school to film gardening children. But it has to be one "where you wouldn’t send your kids" to fit BBC PC guidelines. The researcher apologised half an hour later. BBC livid at exposure.

3. John Harrison's Vegetable Growing Month by Month is flying high in gardening book bestsellers. Harrison is an avowed chemical user. Chems sales rose in 2008. Peat free sales fell in 2008. Peat sales rose. Does this mean the marketing isn't working?