Clare's Garden

When we first moved into our house 11 years ago, the garden was void of anything but grass and a concrete patio ! The previous owners were not at all interested in it and so a quick mow of the lawn was about it. The garden itself is not actually very big at all. It runs a little bit longer than the width of the house (approx 41 feet) and is only 21 feet in length ! However,we are extremely lucky to have a small stream which runs along the bottom of the garden, and trees beyond that, which in summer, give us complete privacy from the footpath and trading estate behind them. We have done several things to the garden over the years. Here are some of them.

My husband put down wooden decking to cover up the concrete patio and we used three large reclaimed railway sleepers as steps down to the main part of the garden from the decking. It has lasted very well so far, and all that is needed is a bit of a spruce up each year with the pressure washer.

Having tried unsuccessfully for years to establish a decent lawn, we decided to replace it with Cotswold stone chippings. I am so glad that we did now. Not only does it look great, but we don't have to mow it ! It is a real suntrap in our garden too being south facing and the stone reflects the heat even more.

We are extremely lucky to have a small stream which runs along the bottom of our garden. This is home to numerous ducks, moorhens, small fish, occasional trout and the odd water vole. The ducklings are a joy to watch each year. We have even had them nest in the garden in previous years and had to help them find a safe route back to the water !

This is our palm tree.It was only a couple of feet tall when we bought it about 8 years ago. Now look at it !

The Chusan Palm is native to central China and the male and female of the species both grow flowers. The male produces yellow flowers and the females are a greenish colour.

It is a very hardy palm which will withstand temperatures down to minus 15 Celsius ( 5 Fahrenheit). Ours is thriving and wasn't even bothered by the particularly hard winter we had this year. It was covered in snow for days and did'nt mind one bit.

I think it has quite a bit more growing to do yet aswell, as apparently they can grow to 15 metres tall. We take off the lower leaves to give it the more traditional palm tree shape. Some people prefer to leave them. It is personal choice I guess. Ours seems very happy, so we can't be doing it any harm. I just wish we had a bit more room to have several more !

This is the small courtyard to the side of the kitchen. The space used to be occupied by a tatty old wooden shed which we ripped out to leave an area perfectly sized for outdoor entertaining/dining etc. We paved it with stone slabs, put up a pergola across the entire area and then put in the grapevine. It is such a beautiful old, gnarled looking white muscat vine which will in time, cover the whole pergola, creating a cool shady place to relax (complete with dessert grapes above our heads !)

This is a close up photo of the tiny bunches of grapes which are forming on our vine. It is a white muscat grape which is good as a dessert grape or even better for wine making

We have only had it for two years and it took a bit of time to settle in. It seems to be thriving now though, with more bunches of grapes than ever.

My eldest son Lewis absolutely adores strawberries and so I have tried really hard to get a decent crop of them this year. It is quite a challenge when you are reliant upon grow bags, baskets and containers to grow them in. Some I have grown in a basket lined with sphagnum moss. These are doing really well and fingers crossed, remarkably unaffected by any pests. The ones that I have been growing in a grow bag have been more testing. I have some really good plants in it that have been producing many flowers, however once they turned into fruit, they were being eaten as they ripened ( and not by us !)

The grow bag is situated on pea shingle, which I thought should deter slugs. Anyway, I put a thick layer of straw around them in the hope that this would solve the problem. It did'nt ! I did discover the culprits in the end though. Two cheeky blackbirds, every morning, would fight over them !

After discovering the identity of the phantom strawberry munchers, an answer to the problem came in the form of an old tomato greenhouse frame and some netting. I defy anything to get past that lot now !

The moral of this story is, if your strawberries are precious to you, make sure that you have every angle covered. There are some determined little critters out there, some of which seem to only respond to army warfare tactics !

Good luck and hopefully happy strawberry growing !

Potatoes have to be one of the easiest vegetables that you can grow in containers.

I have used two different types of container this year to grow mine. I have King Edward main crop potatoes in two large plastic dustbins and Charlotte second early potatoes in recycled compost bags.

With the dustbins, we just drilled plenty of drainage holes in the bottom (at least 10) so as they would'nt get waterlogged, then placed some old broken pots in the bottom. We then put about 6 inches of multi purpose compost in and placed 5 seed potatoes onto the surface. Then more compost was put on top (about 6 inches again) and we watered them in well. After a couple of weeks the green leaves poked their way out of the compost and grew very rapidly from then on. You need to make sure that you regularly earth up the potatoes by adding more compost to cover the stems leaving only about 5 Cm's visible and also give them plenty of water (don't let them dry out).

The recycled compost bags were used in the same way. We rolled down the top of the bag to about half way and planted in the same way that we did in the dustbins. The only difference being that as the potatoes grew and needed earthing up, we just rolled the bag up a bit each time to accommodate the compost and new growth.

Growing potatoes in containers like this is not only beneficial if you are short of space, but also they are less likely to be affected by pests and diseases than potatoes grown in the ground.

The photo is of my bins filled with King Edward potatoes. Fergus decided that he wanted to get in on the action too !

I don't think that there is much else that beats the taste of freshly picked, home grown runner beans. I have planted lots of them this year in the hope that I will get a bumper crop ! This close up picture is one that I took in my garden. The flowers have the most beautiful colour. A really cheery orange/red.

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