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Gardening through a pandemic – Part 1 Spring
March, April, May. As we progressed through March 2020, coronavirus was becoming more and more alarming. When Italy put their country into lockdown, followed by Spain, panic buying ramped up here. As everyone else clambered for toilet rolls, my biggest concern was, have I got enough compost? I knew that as long as I could garden I could cope with anything! On 23rd March 2020, Britain followed others into a nationwide lockdown. Like so many people I found myself stuck at home. I am not a keyworker and I can’t work from home. So there it was, an unspecified period of time off work, with nowhere to go. 24th March…
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The Pizza & Olive Patios
Garden transformation Part 20 – Making a patio There were three seating areas in the garden when we moved here eight years ago. I really approve of lots of different places to sit in your garden, as it gives you a different perspective. It also encourages you to sit and enjoy, which as a gardener is something you sometimes forget to do. First area – The Summer-house The first, was a small area half way down the garden that we are still in the process of turning into a summerhouse. It’s an ideal spot as it gets the sun most of the day, and early evening. Second area – The…
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Making a Mediterranean Bed
Garden transformation Part 19 – Dreaming of an Olive Tree Those of you that have been reading this garden transformation series from the beginning, know by now that the whole garden design started with the raised vegetable beds. Getting food growing was the top priority. I then drew the garden out to scale and set about slotting in all of the other priorities, such as the Greenhouse, Pond and seating areas. Even though the garden is mainly a kitchen garden, flowers are extremely important. Mainly because, flowers bring pollinators. Without these wonderful little insects we would have very little food indeed! Also because I am a self-confessed plantaholic, that struggles…
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Easy, Purple Sprouting Broccoli Soup
If you grow your own purple sprouting broccoli, you’ll know that once it starts producing, it can go a bit mad! With all that super flavoured broccoli you certainly don’t want it going to waste. Why not make a quick batch of soup. The soup only takes forty minutes from begging to end, with a twenty minute sit down in the middle – can’t be bad. Enjoy some for your lunch, then freeze the rest for another day. This recipe is the same as many others, it doesn’t require exact measurements. If you have more broccoli, use another onion. Purple Sprouting Broccoli – Around a dinner plate full when chopped…
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Planting the Magnolia border
Garden transformation Part 18 – View from the Kitchen. The magnolia border is a rectangular border 8ft wide & 11ft long. It is in the corner of the L-shaped patio, and the bed you look out on from the kitchen window. The plan of the garden all started with six raised vegetable beds and everything else grew out from them. As these beds are symmetrical it left two rectangles just off the patio. The one on the left is the quince bed, which is included in the kitchen garden, with artichokes. On the right-hand side is the magnolia bed which is part of the ornamental garden. Looking out from the…
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Digging up the lawn
Garden transformation Part 17 – What no lawn! Lawn hater? No of course not! I love a beautifully manicured, luscious green lawn as much as anyone, but not enough to want to look after one myself, a lawn through my eyes is another border waiting to happen – more plants to buy. Considering how much I love gardening, I’ve never liked mowing the lawn and that goes for my husband too. At the risk of getting hate mail from all of you lawn lovers, which in Britain let’s face it, is a lot of you! I think a lawn is the highest maintenance area of any garden – that’s if…
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Creating a Woodland border
Garden transformation Part 16 – Colour at last! The woodland border runs down the right-hand side of the garden in front of the holly hedge. It starts by, what is now the bamboo bed and finishes by the large yellow Irish yew tree ‘Taxus baccata Fastigiata Aurea’. It is a partially shaded border. Winter 2013 – Spring 2014 When we moved here there was no border down most of the hedge. At the end nearest to the house there was one very large conifer that started on the patio and spread around the corner. Then two more conifer trees down the length, they had grown over into the hedge and…
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Creating the Pathways
Garden transformation Part 15 – A long walk. We’ve ended up with 237 feet/72.2 metres of pathways, mainly the consequence of having such a long garden! The raised vegetable beds have also contribute though. It’s certainly good for our step count, especially if you keep forgetting your tools! The vegetable beds were the first part of the garden to be designed, there are six of them and we wanted descent pathways around them. The main priority was to make sure we could comfortably wheel the wheelbarrow around. June 2014 As we both hate mowing grass, we had no intentions of keeping any lawn. Each time we took a little more…
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The Joys of June
I’ve finally come down off cloud nine after my brief appearance on Gardeners World at the beginning of the month. I think I’m now at the end of all the teasing about wanting my autograph! What strange weather we’ve been having. No wonder us Brits never stop talking about it! The coldest rainiest May followed by a super hot dry June – until now….. The flower borders are loving this hot spell especially the roses, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen looking so good As for the veg garden’s all over the place, some things doing well – like the rhubarb. All that rain followed by this warm sunshine…
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Gardening on an Ice-Age Glacier
Garden transformation Part 14 – Soil, rocks and pebbles Before moving here I’d only had one other garden, it had beautiful black soil that your spade just sunk into, it was black gold. On moving to our new garden however, we discovered that the soil is almost 50% stone. Not only does your spade not go in, but neither does your fork! The only way to dig our soil is with a mattock or a pick. Even when you’ve loosened it, trying to get your shovel in is still a challenge as it hits numerous rocks and pebbles. After hubby breaking the wooden handles on our existing pick and my…
