I’ve long agreed with William Morris when he said that “…have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.” When I say agree, I mean in a theoretical sense of course. The amount of clutter we appear to own boggles the mind. But I digress. Most of what […]
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I’ve been growing courgettes for years but it was only last year that I realised I was doing it all wrong. We were staying at the glorious Pig hotel in the New Forest and wandering around their lovely kitchen garden when I spotted some monster prickly leaves. Intrigued by their similarity to courgettes, I moved […]
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Back at the start of the summer we had a six metre deep, 48 metre long flowerbed dug out of our formal garden. We then added a border of flexible metal to the edge to keep the plants in (I was filling gaps with lemon balm and lemon verbena, both of which have become seriously […]
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Getting chickens was probably one of the least demanding things we’ve done since becoming smallholders. It seemed like. huge endeavour when we actually went to get our first flock, but it takes practically no effort to run a chicken. As long as they’re fed and watered and have a little house to snuggle up in […]
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When I think of gardening, I think of my mother first and foremost, but I also think of her parents. I used to love visiting them when I was a little girl. The sun always shone in my grandparents garden and my memories are all of riotous flowerbeds full of colours and a lovely birdbath. […]
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Karma really does have a sense of humour. Every time I get a bit too puffed up with smug smallholding pride, out comes her little pin ready to deflate me. We had some friends from London visiting this weekend and amongst the other home-grown delights we planned to serve them I thought we could throw […]
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In the middle of what has arguably been the best summer in years, the only people complaining about the heat are the gardeners, myself amongst them. How glorious to sip a g&t on a sunny evening! How less so to be robbed of that opportunity because of a stupid pipe dream about setting up a […]
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One of the projects I intend to tackle in a big way next year is a cutting garden for flowers. I’ve always had fresh flowers in our home and place them pretty highly in the list of priorities of things that make us feel happy when we’re here. Now that we’ve got the space, I […]
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In an effort to be more green I decided that I should use up the plastic plant labels I got as part of a gardening pack. However, disaster has struck! I wrote on them in what I believed to be indelible ink and it all appears to have washed off! This means that I am […]
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One of the main reasons we’ve always wanted our own smallholding was to be as self-sufficient as possible in terms of food. Given that I’ve always loved gardening, it seemed a natural next step. In London I used to grow as much food as I could in our tiny patio garden and so when moved […]
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London to Land Girl 