The arrival of winter should surely herald hedgehog-like behaviour in all of us. We no longer shuttle too and fro from the kitchen garden to the house laden with gluts that we don’t know how to process fast enough, but rather wish to laze by the fire with a good book. Most flowers fade and […]
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Most edible things that are to be cooked taste better when they’re somewhat caramelised. Meat, onions, garlic, they’re all improved once the sugars inside have been slightly toasted, and sweetcorn is no exception. Ah, sweetcorn, where have you been all my life? Silly question really because the answer is obviously “in the freezer” but that […]
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As our whole garden has all but been removed, I’ve started the really rather enjoyable job of planning next year’s growing, albeit a bit earlier than I usually would. And one thing that I’ll definitely be doing again is companion planting spring onions in amongst my carrots. The RHS recently released trial information on carrot […]
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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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Sometimes it’s possible to be a bit too practical at the expense of enjoyable frivolities. I’ve always loved flower gardens but my lack of space in our London garden meant that I’ve rarely chosen inedible plants. When we moved to our country house I delighted in planting flowers in our front garden, and also in […]
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The thought occurs that although we’ve had serious amounts of eggs from our hens so far this year, we haven’t had a single vegetable or fruit. Well, we have had fruit technically I suppose, in that we planted fruit trees and I harvested tiny fruits to stop them developing but obviously tiny immature apples etc […]
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Canine-human relations are decidedly strained at the moment. Not content with pulling up and eating multiple raspberry canes, a cranberry, umpteen blackberry plants and a whole apricot sapling, the hound has embarked upon a campaign designed to destroy our new long flowerbed before it is even planted. We are slowly accumulating the plants for said […]
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Hello, my name is Catherine and I’m a topiary addict. After planting our six foot topiary rabbit for the children, I just keep thinking of different things in our garden that should, if possible, be made of living materials. We really want to make our smallholding a haven for wildlife and one of the easiest […]
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Or rather, from medium-sized oaks, mighty oaks grow. Or they would if we weren’t going to cut the growing tips to get them to focus on becoming bushy instead. As part of our drive to get the basic structure of the formal garden in place, we decided to replace some of the many trees we […]
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When we bought our much-beloved smallholding, we had great plans for the garden. I’d loved my tiny London patio beyond measure, or so I thought until I arrived here. One of the things I was really keen to do as soon as possible was to prettify the formal garden with flower border in a country […]
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London to Land Girl 