The Garden
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Finally Growing Angelica ‘Gigas’
I’ve lost count of how long I’ve been trying to grow Angelica ‘Gigas’. From when I first saw a picture of one, I knew I had to have it in the garden. I love tall plants anyway, and this statues plant can grow up to two and a half metres high. With its red stems and stunning dark plum-purple domed flower heads, it was an absolute must have! Angelica is a biennial plant, meaning it doesn’t flower in its first year. It puts its roots down, ready to flower the following year. Once it has flowered it dies completely, hopefully having set seeds to create next years plants. Take One…
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Beans – French, Runner & Borlotti
Growing beans in a pot Beans were the second crop I ever grew, after tomatoes. I only had the tiniest little veg area, so I grew some runner beans in Grans old dolly tub. I really don’t know what she’d have made of that! Now that we’ve moved house and created a kitchen garden, with six raised vegetable beds. I grow tulips in Granny’s old dolly tub, I even managed to find a matching one at the local auction house. Space to grow more beans Now having so much more space, I grow three types of climbing beans, French, Borlotti, and the good old ‘Runner’. I grow two varieties of…
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Tomatoes – My first crop
Tomatoes were the first edible plants I grew, which I’m sure is true of many gardeners. I’ve grown them from seed for more than 20 years now and February wouldn’t feel the same without the excitement of starting the tomatoes. Losing my dad as a teenager meant I lost all of his gardening knowledge, built up over so many generations. I still feel sad for all the gardening chats we would have had, as us gardeners do like to talk about our hobby. By the time I got into my mid-twenties, the gardening bug had got a hold of me. I knew so little and was desperate to learn more.…
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Wildlife Finds the Pond
I’ve been dreaming of a pond since I was a little girl. After my first pond dipping trip with an inspirational teacher. Reinforced in later years by watching Geoff Hamilton on Gardeners World. He was a great advocate of wildlife in your garden, and there’s no better way to encourage it, than a pond! Like Geoff I want to garden organically, especially the food production. This means tolerating imperfections and some damage to your plants. If you completely wipe out the undesirable wildlife, slugs, greenfly etc. then the desirable ones will have nothing to eat. The idea is to encourage the maximum diversity of wildlife, this way you create a…
