e-mail Jane Owen with your gardening questions: jane.owen1@timesonline.co.uk

How can I keep an orange tree given to me at Christmas? It is a Seville and it is in a large terracotta pot which fills our conservatory - we prefer to use as it (the conservatory) a living room. Is it true that it can be kept outside? We live in central London. Dave Everton

Robert Moy, who runs a company called Tuscan Pots in Oxford, specialises in citrus and olives and tells me that citrus will survive outside in sheltered spots of cities like London. One of his triumphs in this respect is a citrus courtyard in Worcester College, Oxford where all the citrus have survived outside in pots for five years. The trick is to keep them well fed with sequestrated iron. It may be worth keeping your tree inside until spring if it has not yet been hardened off and bolstered with iron. Would it be possible to check all this with the person who gave you the tree?

We planted a fruit tree (we think it might be pear or apple) about 18 months to two years ago, but now we'd like to move it. The tree is now about 2.5 m high, and the branches span about 1.5 m. Will we kill it by digging it up? Do you have any tips? Theresa Buck

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Prepare a decent sized planting hole right away. Make it three times the size of the rootball and line it with compost, blood and bone. Next, dig out and re-plant your tree taking as large a rootball as possible so that the plant can barely detect that it is being moved. Stake it and keep it well watered in the coming year – this is crucial – and I am sure that the tree will survive so long as you plant it in a good position. Plants have an over-riding desire for life.

A couple of years ago we bought an Agapanthus. It is now planted in the garden and looks like it could do with being 'split' into two or more plants. Any tips on how we can go about this? Also it didn't flower last year - despite flowering the two previous years (the first year in its pot, and the second year in the garden). What can we do to encourage it to flower? Name and address withheld

Agapanthus are woefully unpredictable when it comes to flowering. Having said that, last year’s dismal summer did not do much to encourage these sun lovers from southern Africa. They flower best and thrive with restricted roots and so splitting may make matters worse. If you’re determined to split – to increase plant numbers I assume – this is a good time although these plants are so tough they cope with splitting at almost any time of year. To encourage flowering, make sure the plants are kept in full sun – but they also need to be kept well watering especially during and just after flowering when they set bud for the following year. Also, add a good potash feed and keep mulching the plants in spring with garden compost.

My husband and I are novice composters can you help us with some composting questions that have been puzzling us: can we put teabags into the composter? Can we use the paper from our shredder in the composter, and if so, what sorts of ratios of paper to organic waste can we put? (Is it ok to use bleached paper in compost?) When should we 'harvest' the compost? Name and address withheld

All tea bags contain some man-made fibre but most have so little it is not worth bothering about. So, stick the bags in the compost and let them rot. I sometimes come across the odd non-rotted bag when I harvest my compost. I suppose I should put them back in my composter but I never bother – I just let them do their last bit of rotting in the soil. It never takes long. Composts need to have a rough ratio of 50:50 ‘green’ (vegetable peelings, non-invasive weeds and grass cuttings etc) to ‘brown’ (paper, straw, old jumpers and even torn up corrugated cardboard). Grass clippings have to be treated with care because they will form a sinking brown mush if not mixed with enough dry ‘brown’ material. Bleached paper is fine in compost.

The moment to harvest is when it looks like compost – ie no signs of the fruits, vegetables and paper (tea bags aside) that you added to your composter - and when it looses its compost-y smell.

Climbing rose that will grow in shade please. Preferably red and scented.Heather Copeland

No rose can cope with dense shade and most do better in full sun but one which would do well in gentle shade is Souvenir de Docteur Jamain which has deep red scented blooms. Zepherine Drouhine is deep pink and so may not be exactly what you want but it has a glorious scent, it can cope with some shade and it is thornless. Michael Marriott to head honcho at David Austin Roses is outraged I should ever suggest Zepherine Drouhine because, he says, they are disease prone. Given that I have known battalions of ZD since I was knee high to a grass hopper, none of which suffered from disease, I find his view difficult to accept. But you have been warned. Gertrude Jekyll will cope with a little shade

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