Gardeners Voice » London

Urban inspirations (episode 1) …

This Yorkshire Life — Mon, 12 Jul 2010 21:10:00 +0000

Wow we’ve had a busy weekend – our last weekend away before school breaks for the summer and i can get stuck into the garden and BH can start building things. Once we had watered everything and pegged down the netting we headed south to visit family and friends back in London. We stayed with my absolutely fabulous sister in law – the City Girl to my Freeranger! CityGirl has been up to her eyes in house restoration and gardening herself and we think shes done an amazing job!

CityGirls castle in the clouds is a restored chapel. The front is covered in this amazing Virginia Creeper which although it needs taming every couple of years is worth it for those too few weeks a year when it turns a rich beautiful red.

The country life has definitely made it to the City though as CityGirl wasted no time at all in getting raised beds built and getting her crops in! She had a few funny looks from her neighbours at the time, but now I think they’re eyeing up her salad leaves – hands off!!!

I am amazed by the produce CityGirl gets from her front garden. We picked cucumbers this time, but shes also got peppers and lettuce bursting out all over the place…

But every CityGirl needs somewhere to sit back and enjoy the fruits of their labour…

Space is limited around the house, but a visit to the Chelsea Flower Show gave us some great ideas for small space gardening. You can’t believe the revamp this area has had – its unrecognisable from the yardspace that it was and is an awesome retreat from the manic city life surrounding it.

Theres not much room for pots so CityGirl has installed living walls – Its almost impossible to walk past these without running your hands through them. This square is repeated across the wall like a patchwork, it is interspersed with black grasses – tres chic!

Tourist in my Own Town – Southend on Sea

down on the allotment — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 21:40:00 +0000

Here in London we had the hottest day of the year so far. Way up in the 90s. The most sensible place to be on a hot day like this is on the coast. If you live in London then the nearest option is to take a trip out East to the Thames Estuary to the town of Southend on Sea. The pier at Southend is the longest pier in the world at over a mile long. This morning I walked out to the end of the pier to see what was going on. Thank heavens for a lovely sea breeze or that heat would really scorch me today.

There is a small train running up and down the pier which was built in the 19th century. Traditionally working class Londoners would treat themselves to a trip out to Southend. My Mother tells me that as a young girl in the 1930s she would take a paddle steamer from Tower Bridge to Southend once a year as a special treat. The boat moored up at the end of the pier.

Beautiful views all over the Thames estuary from the end of the pier.

Today an old 3 masted sailing ship Atlantis was moored at the end of the pier and will be taking people out for sailing trips this weekend!

Next I took the train 2 stops down to Leigh on Sea. I have wanted to come here for many years ever since I saw the TV chef Rick Stein come here for his food heroes series. Here at the Crooked Billet pub you can drink a very fine selection of guest English beer overlooking the sea.

Whilst enjoying the fresh seafood which is landed daily at this busy fishing village.

The speciality here is cockles.

So I sat and watched the fishing boats in the estuary, drank a pint of my favourite English beer ‘London Pride’ , ate a cockle sandwich and watched the seagulls.

If you ever get a chance to visit this part of the Essex coast here on the Thames estuary you cannot get better than a visit to Leigh on Sea. This is a heavenly place for seafood lovers. Every other shop sells cockles, mussels, whelks, jellied eels, shrimps…. everywhere.

A small lane at the end of town is called ‘Cockle Shed’ where there are row upon row of ‘Cockle merchants’ – do you imagine that someone has a passport, and at the back where you fill in your occupation they have written ‘Cockle Merchant’?? – just a thought!

And there are mountains of cockle shells here too. Ground up to make chicken grit and soil fertilizer I suppose.

Tromba D’Albegna Squash

down on the allotment — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 19:09:00 +0000

OK, let’s get the sniggers out in the open! OOH Matron that’s a nice big one! Last year I was fortunate to swap some seeds with Mas Du Diable, and she very kindly sent me some of these Tromba D’albegna squash seeds, also sometimes known as tromboncino squash.

These are an Italian variety that should grow up to 3ft long. The seeds are in a bulbous shaped end and the flesh is all in the long neck which can twist and turn like a trombone. Apparently you can make them bend by placing an object in their way. I am experimenting with this theory and placing some bricks around them. These can be eaten young like this as a courgette, or left to mature into a sweet butternut squash.

Now I have plenty of courgettes growing at the moment so I will leave these to get bigger and mature till the Autumn. These are amazingly prolific in my garden. There is a female flower bearing fruit at almost every leaf joint! I might even have to take some of the small ones off to eat as courgettes so as not to stress the plant and to let the rest grow big and strong. The hot weather we have been having in London seems to suit them!

You can just about see the bulbous end on the left side where the seeds are forming. This has been an exciting experiment so far, I’ve not grown this variety before and I look forward to trying them.

I took this photo above in the market in Funchal, Madeira last year. It looks as if these have been harvested early when in courgette mode as they are still green.

This is hopefully what I will end up with. Judith from Everything in the Garden’s Rosie sent me this photo a couple of years back of her Tromboncino squash as an entry into Matron’s Squashblog in October 2007. I have been fascinated with them ever since!

Introducing Arthur…

This Yorkshire Life — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 21:36:00 +0000

Todays blog was going to be about my lovely new garden seat – its an early birthday present from BH and my folks. I came to day to find it built and in situ – no small feat if you’d seen the weeding that took place to reveal the paving slabs! I was led up the garden for a grande reveal and tadah!!! here it was. I am undecided whether or not to grow something up it – at the moment Im just enjoying its pristine tidiness (which is not a typical state to find anything in here!)

Until now our only seating options in the garden were some borrowed patio chairs and an upturned bucket so I cant tell you how happy I am. After lots of ooh and aahing i decided that to really do it justice I should get a glass of something nice and enjoy the evening sunshine in my new seat – at least that was the plan. Only on my return I found that I had been usurped!

Meet Arthur! He is our Airdale Terrier, He’s two years old, lovely and as mad as a sack of badgers. I think he was feeling a bit left out and decided to get in on the blogging opportunites! To be honest the only reason he hasnt been on the blog so far is that he rarely stands still long enough – as you can see…

He’s a terror when it comes to knocking plants over and the veg patch is off limits to him at the moment as he tramples everything in site – so no wonder he’s looking for sanctuary.

Heres one of the plants that I daren’t plant out yet until i find an Arthur free spot. Its a ‘Big Daddy’ Hosta which I bought at the Chelsea Flower show. That sounds so glam until you picture me carting this across London – trust me, it earned its name well – it weighs a ton!

and these…

I have no idea what they are but they spring up from out of nowhere and put on this amazing show.

As long as there’s not an Airedale on the loose!

Seasonal Veggies

down on the allotment — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 18:10:00 +0000

I love growing old heritage varieties of peas and beans…but Most of the old varieties don’t give you a sweet, tender and prolific crop. This year I decided to grow Hurst Greenshaft peas and they are just starting to crop. Most of these pods have 10 or 11 peas inside. Sweet and tender!

Beautiful hot weather in London again today. Up in the 80′s and these wonderful cirrus clouds were on show in my back garden. Every so often I like to visit the Cloud Appreciation Society website to look at their gallery.

These old pea and bean varieties have a beautiful show of flowers. This is a climbing bean variety called Mrs Fortunes. Look at these beautiful pink flowers.

The pumpkins and courgettes are enjoying the hot weather and the trailing varieties are growing about a foot a day at the moment. This is a variety of squash called Tromba D’Albegna – it should bend round when it is ripe to resemble a trombone!

And finally…… do we really need Brussels sprouts in the supermarket? Flown all the way from South Africa?…. in June?.. I think not. What about you?

The Thames Barrier Park will shake you up a little

Catharine Howard — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 16:31:13 +0000

Thames Barrier

On a visit to the Louvre, I found it weird and rather fascinating to go down into the vaulted places beneath the pavement, descending Tardis style through a hi tech pyramid of glass and steel. A good French joke and the Thames Barrier Park has a few – not least, because it was designed by Alain Provost, the man behind Parc Andre Citreon in Paris.

Google it and you will find weighty comment. This urban space has won many awards and provided the magnet for elegant private housing in a run-down bit of London. Up until the late 60s the land was used for heavy industry with a dye-works, chemical plant and armaments factory all found here. Raw ingredients for the new park: toxic ground and an incredible view.

Getting the ground in anything like a good state for planting was the first big task: surface oils and tars had to be removed and contaminated water pumped from the subterranean water table. Before construction and planting, an elaborate drainage system was installed to drain surface water off the land.

As for the setting: the Thames Barrier pulls the gaze from the moment you reach the park. Shiney armadillos which lean towards the far riverbank and to warehouses and belching factory chimneys. On a grey day, free of water sparkle, it is sullen but still manages to entrance. A classic post-industrial Thames view.

The Masterplan of the Park can be tracked down on one of those websites and jazzed up blues and reds show a dark diagonal slash across the park. A reference to the old docking past – a Cutting – 5 metres deep and concrete sided that heads the visitor straight in the direction of the Barrier climax. The way in is a complex of leaping, dancing fountains leading to undulations of yew. In the lee of their shelter, a warm micro-climate is created and long strip flower beds give rainbow colours for the summer.

shimmering miscanthus

The planting includes monumental grasses. Tall and straight, they provide architectural interest in winter. Movement and sound when nothing much else is growing. Miscanthus, used a good deal, look like a rampant wheat crop on the loose. Shimmering against a backdrop of winter-black yew hedging – a foil too to cinnamon stems of bare hydrangeas. Bear in mind the light against dark for winter and spring effect. A rhythm has been created by the use of big swathes of one type of plant, carefully chosen to contrast well with their neighbour.

The tree planting is disciplined, achieved by the use of single species in large clumps – either birch or pine. Even spacing with specimens chosen carefully to match in size. A pattern in what initially seems random adds an allure.

Betula jacquemontii

The use of hard landscaping materials is equally studied – polished granite, the waterside railings of tensioned steel are blatantly nautical, there is a sure embrace of concrete as a material. Paths converge at an airy structure on steel stilts supporting a louvered roof: the Pavilion of Remembrance complete with ships decking and concrete curved loungers looking out at the grey Thames.

Thames Barrier Park is a rich source for ideas – but if you want to copy that Cutting, I would steer clear unless you have an old canal to dispose of or a digger man with extreme capabilities.

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Elephants and green walls

Catharine Howard — Sun, 27 Jun 2010 20:26:42 +0000

These elephants are made of fibre-glass, have been painted by artists and are to be auctioned by a charity, Elephant Family, that is out to save the Asian elephant. Asian elephants are much better behaved than African ones. (who undoubtedly need saving too as they have fallen foul of the poacher for their tusks and competition for land as well).

At the moment round about 300 of these beasts are sitting right in the middle of a dusty maidan in the grounds of the Chelsea Royal Hospital, waiting to be auctioned off. They are occupying a space that a few weeks ago would have been at the epicentre of the Chelsea Flower Show. Every trace of which has completely disappeared. A scorched earth totality.

The elephants have been seen all over London and are now coralled before the auction which will be on July 3rd.

The sprinklers were on to enliven the grass beneath the elephants and we did not completely manage to duck them in time. Went on from there to a party, soaked. Puzzled enquiry: Why were the elephants being watered? I’m not a Londoner and so stumbled upon the highly coloured pachyderm collection with total delight. Delight heightened by the evening light and arcs of water playing across them.

The next morning, the route for home and out of the elephant zone took us past Buckingham Palace. Opposite the palace in Buckingham Palace Road was an even better visual treat: A green wall. This has been installed by Biotecture, a company based in Sussex. Four plants have been used: Soleirolia soleirolii, Euonymus minimus, Liriope muscari and Pachysandra terminalis.

On a plaque on the back-side of the wall (this sounds a bit strange but the wall is like a form of solid, living scaffolding) Biotecture company have posted a useful sign which says it all: Plants are grown vertically in a patented modular, hydroponic-fed system. The benefits of green wall include reduced thermal loading on buildings, natural air filtration, reduced heat-island effect, sound attenuation and creation of urban ecological habitat. I’ve printed this pretty much verbatim as it all seems believable – that is, apart from the heat island effect which puzzles me.

All that apart, it has high visual appeal.

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How green does your garden grow?

This Yorkshire Life — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 11:46:00 +0000

I didnt grow up with a passion for gardening and i wouldnt say i was particularly green fingered, but in my early twenties a great friend of mine (and amazing gardener) Kim drew me in to the all consuming world of horticulture. She tempted me in at first with a few visits to garden centres, some free cuttings and that was it, i was hooked. When BH and I got our first flat together we had 123 plants in the tiny backyard, including tomatoes and peppers.

I obsessed about the garden here before we moved, planning out planting schemes in my head, drawing up crop rotations and all that. The garden had been very loved but then untended for some time so it needed plenty of tlc. Never having worked a big garden before i had no idea just how much hard work it would be.

These are my first raised beds. We built the before we’d moved up just so that we could get some stuff in the ground and my lovely sister Pip watered everything for us. It looks all overgrown and untidy, but the day we built and planted it we had to leave it to drive back to London. I was miserable in the car going back to London when there was all this soil to be played with here.

These were our first greenhouse tomatoes, lovingly tended by Pip and my Dad until we got here (each swears they did the lions share of the work – who to believe!?!)

But nowadays its a whole family effort

One day it might even look like this…

at least thats the plan!

Where it all began…

This Yorkshire Life — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 19:38:00 +0000

Almost two years ago we made the move from Enfield, North London to the wilds of East Yorkshire – my home village to be precise. Despite living here for the first 18 years of my life, i’d been away a long time and some serious readjustment followed. My husband is a Londoner born and bred and so this was an even greater culture shock for him. In our first few months we seriously wondered what we’d done, committing to a life without Starbucks when we’d spent years with retail therapy on our doorstep. But we’d found our dream house (we’d actually walked past it on our wedding day and admired it), we have two children who needed a garden that we could never afford in London and we needed to stop watching reruns of River Cottage and start living it.

An offer was accepted, i found a new job and husband was persuaded to become a stay at home dad for the forseeable future. Before we knew it we were here and living the dream, building raised beds, planting veg, soaking up blue sky.

But before you think this is all smug loveliness, we also discovered rising damp, occasional social attitudes that I thought hadnt been legal since 1973 and that I’d forgotten just how flippin cold it can be up North!

Despite this were still here, the chickens have arrived (more of them to come) and now I cant imagine living anywhere else (unless it had fields, and more land, and barns and stables and room for goats…)

Mystery Tomato

down on the allotment — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 19:11:00 +0000

I went to my local hardware store and bought a couple of tomato plants to fill the gaps in my frost bitten plants. This one was called ‘Elisir’ – so I bought it home and looked it up…not much known about this variety. Has anyone grown Elisir? All I found out was that they were red, an F1 hybrid and resistant to splitting. Lovely hot weather here in London at the moment, so everything is growing up leaps and bounds.

The sweetcorn has grown inches a day at the moment, and the second sowing of seeds that I planted the day after the frost…have caught up with the original survivors and are nearly the same size! I planted out my pumpkins and corn together today. Queensland Blue squash from Scarecrow, and Tromba D’albegna from Mas du Diable.

You can just see above my brussels sprouts and leeks settling into their new home. I am searching around for something to protect them with at the moment.

I was never any good at successional planting, especially when it comes to lettuces! it just doesn’t seem right to plant 6 lettuce seeds then wait a month. Matron has to go the whole hog straight away. Here I have rows of Winter Density, Labacher Ice, and the red one is a variety I bought on the North coast of Norway at Nordkapp. The packet said something like ‘Americanischer Braun’.. well, at least they are hardy. I am going to pick these lettuce a leaf at a time.

Finally, I thought my banana ‘Musa Basjoo’ had bitten the dust after I forgot to cover it this Winter, but half a dozen little banana plants have started to grow from the base. Today I pulled them all up – with lovely masses of their own roots – and potted them up.