It is less than one year to the London Olympics in 2012. Summer is nearly over, yet there is much still to do in the garden, including cutting the lawn and hedges, weeding and pruning the bushes. Much of this gardening will include strenuous physical activities, that an Olympic sports person would be familiar with. In a recent survey, 80% of Ontario chiropractors reported that working in the garden was one of the most common sources of neck and back pain. To help you enjoy the fruits of your labour, as you prepare the garden for winter, it's recommend you keep the following tips in mind:

I sometimes think that if we had to have only one flower in the whole year - a sort of Desert Island flower - it would have to be the daffodil. Nothing else quite so joyously announces that Spring has come around again.

Oxfordshire Handyman Brenden Gillen is based in Oxford, As a handyman he provides a full range of repair and hard landscaping services.These include: All types of fencing, gates, repair work, sheds, concrete hard standing, block paving, patios, steps, garden walls, retaining walls, ponds, lighting, decking, aco drains, drainage, shingle, soak away, new driveways, landscaping. Mini digger for hire with driver at week ends. Groundwork up to floor level, dpc, formwork and reinforcement.

Oxfordshire has some of the most glorious, varied, historic and interesting gardens in Britain - just what you'd expect for a county of rolling green hills, stately homes and honey-coloured stone buildings. There are formal gardens, clipped and tamed, in awe-inspiring settings as Blenheim Palace where fountains sparkle and dance on the Water Terraces. Or Oxford’s Botanic Garden's Rose Garden, amid trimmed yew hedges, commemorating Florey, who developed penicillin.

The gardens featured include Stowe, constructed on a magnificent scale with more than 40 temples and monuments, wooded walks by lakes and fun play elements for children, and Blenheim Palace Park, landscaped by 'Capability' Brown. Its formal Rose, Italian, and Secret Gardens as well as Water Terraces seem at their best - as if by magic - almost all year round. Hidden away in a Chiltern valley lies Stonor, whose rolling deer park and walled garden planted with roses and apple trees surprise and delight. Up in the north of Oxfordshire, among the Ironstone Hills, Broughton Castle gazes majestically over its moat, parkland and fleur-de- lys shaped box hedges, enclosing rare and historic roses.