Unexpected floral finds: cutting flowers from the garden

July 23, 2018.Reading time 1 minute.

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 […]

Planning a traditional country garden in the front

January 28, 2018.Reading time 4 minutes.

We tend to focus on practical (read: food producing) parts of our smallholding when prioritising projects. But one thing I did want to do when we moved in was to fence off the back garden and paddocks from the front. This wasn’t just to make it more secure for the children and various pets that […]

Gather ye roses if ye may (and ye can’t, the sodding ground is undiggable!)

January 14, 2018.Reading time 6 minutes.

In the spirit of trying to do as much as we can around our little homestead ourselves, we had a good crack at the main flowerbeds in the front garden. This is a slight change of pace for us as we’ve focussed mainly on practical projects thus far, chicken-proofing the paddock for them to free […]

Death on hairy stems, or, the sad demise of the Japanese Wineberry

June 25, 2014.Reading time 3 minutes.

The first plant when the trouble began When I decided to grow a couple of Japanese Wineberry (Rubus phoenicolasius) plants in my tiny city garden, I was hoping for oodles of the sweet red berries, picked fresh from the bush in August. And the plant itself seemed so pretty, with bright red, unusual and hairy […]