Puzzles and prizes

Test your gardening knowledge with our brainteasers this month!

Enter our Christmas puzzles to win an Ego leaf blower, Hayloft vouchers and a hamper of gardening goodies

CLUES ACROSS

1 A dry seed-bearing fruit of fir and pine trees (4) 3 A plant with a natural habitat at high elevations or above the tree line (6) 7 Wild four-leaved plant of the polycarpon genus producing many ovules (7) 8 Spring bulb of which parrot, fringed and Darwin hybrids are types (5) 9 Cuphea ignea or - - - - - plant from Mexico with scarlet tubular flowers (5) 11 Low, glazed structure for growing on greenhouse seedlings – cold - - - - - (5) 13 - - - - - lily, an alternative common name for red hot poker (5) 15 Rose - - - - - - - or Lychnis coronaria with silver woolly stems and purplishpink blooms (7) 16 S American bamboo vine genus whose roots flavour sarsaparilla (6) 17 - - - -’s breath, name for the popular cut flower Gypsophila paniculata (4)

CLUES DOWN

1 Lathyrus odorata cultivar – Spencer-type sweet pea named for a long-tailed heavenly body (5) 2 Love-in-a-mist annual genus with bushy habit and sky-blue flowers (7) 4 Pinkish-violet shade often seen in lavenders – or syringa! (5) 5 Common name for the berry-bearing Sambucus nigra (5) 6 To flatten soil (4) 10 Vibrant S African genus that includes the Transvaal daisy (7) 11 Popular weeping fig houseplant, - - - - - benjamina (5) 12 Winter or spring heath genus tolerant of more alkaline soils (5) 13 Garden fork prong (4) 14 Prickly-leaved, usually red-berried shrub or tree of the ilex genus (5)