with “Gardening”
I can remember feeling a bit embarrassed when I first got into gardening. You’d be forgiven from the reaction I got from some friends for thinking I’d decided to become a stamp collector, yodeller or Tory MP…
Yet, knowing you can grow at least some of your own food just by sticking a seed in some soil is one of the most empowering and life-affirming experiences out there. It’s also an incredibly easy, cheap (and fun) thing to do when you garden the badly behaved way…
It was the posh shabby-chic Christmas catalogue that came through the post a few years back that provided an incentive for me to start making my own festive decorations from items gathered from the garden. I balked at what they were charging for what (appeared to me) to be simply bits of tree with silver spray-painted on them…. Instead, with …
A lot of people still follow so-called traditional advice of ‘bedding the garden’ down for winter. This normally entails meticulously pulling out dead or spent crops and digging the ground over to expose it to the elements which is recommended as being ‘good ‘for the soil. It’s actually a terrible, I repeat terrible thing to do on so many levels. …
First – a bit about Sam Sam Gray works a five acre plot in the heart of Shropshire where she keeps British Lop pigs, rare breed chickens, Soay sheep and grows a lot of her own fruit and veg. A published writer and author of ‘Doing it in Wellies’ about her first years on the farm, she is becoming well …
There are many fantastic (and free) materials that can be used to great effect around the smallholding and woodchip has to be one of the best. It’s also one of the easiest to get hold of as most tree surgeons or tree maintenance companies will jump at the opportunity of somewhere to dump their leftovers. So you’ll be doing them …
Kim Stoddart gets up close and personal with all pollinators great and small… Have you ever stopped and listened to the musical sound a bee makes as it works a flower head? Or looked at a wasp as it chews tiny bits of wood off your fence or garden furniture? Wasps may have a somewhat chequered reputation but they are …
There are whole books on the subject of taking cuttings. Whole books about something that is in reality an incredibly easy thing to do. Equally baffling is the fact that most advice is also ridiculously overly-complicated and exacting. No wonder then that many people choose to buy in any extra plants needed, rather than giving it a go themselves. It’s …
I am part of The Growing Kitchen on the Wenlock Barn Estate in Hackney. We started in 2008 with a community garden on a disused piece of lawn. Since then we have expanded to create a foraging garden with a wild area and a community orchard on a separate site. We also have a pond that is teaming with life …
This summer solstice weekend saw the return of the Power of Food Festival to Edinburgh’s community gardens. Across the city, 16 gardens threw open their gates and welcomed in the public, to experience first-hand the magical spaces flourishing right under their noses. From Newhaven to Merchiston, Granton to Tollcross, each garden was unique, with its own original story. Visitors to …
Carol Plummer; engineer, entrepreneur and co-founder of Vivent tells us more about this fascinating subject… Recently there’s been lots of talk in the biology community about whether plants are intelligent. It is an interesting question to consider. What is intelligence? In plants? In people? Do you need a brain to be intelligent? If something is more intelligent than something else …
In the few years since Arthur’s diagnosis (he’s nearly 7) my family and I have been through a lot with our youngest son and found that like most (if not all) non neuro-typical children, he is happiest outside. Actually he’s a charmingly happy little boy most of the time anyway, but he’s utterly in his element when either walking …