Emma the Gardener

The Eden Project is one of the botanic gardens taking part in the 2012 Olympic Wreath Competition.

The idea is for young people aged 11-19 to design an Olympic wreath fit for a champion that contains at least three plants that represent Britain. At least one has to carry a conservation message related to the plant’s environmental, economic or cultural significance.

Once the wreath is made entrants have to submit a photo of themselves wearing it :D plus a list of the plants used and a short piece about why they were chosen. The closing date for entries is the end of the year.

The Eden Project will chose five winners, which will then be submitted BGCI global wreath competition. Eden’s winners will receive certificates and will be contacted by the Eden Project in January 2012.

Winners of the global BGCI competition will have their photo displayed in London during the Summer Olympics 2012. They will be announced on the BGCI competition page and contacted by the Eden Project.

For full details of how to enter, click through to the Eden Project competition home page.

September has come to a close, and with it the inaugural Write Club competition. I am sure you will all agree that the quality of entries was very high, and that every single guest post was worth reading, so lets have a virtual round of applause for all our entrants:

• Katie Allen with the exotic Postcard from Tamil Nadu


• Sara with the blooming wonderful Late Late Show


• Alison Tindales Oriental pearl Of fat white grubs and pale jade beads


• The Courtyard Gardeners’ love letter to A plant in the wrong place


• VP’s moving plea for help against the Horse Chestnut leaf miner


• Tom Carpen’s evocative Season’s bleatings


• Clare Burgess’ homage to volunteering, Not in my backyard


• Julieanne Porter’s sparky Go Electric


• Vanessa’s timely Ramble about the bramble


• Carl Legge’s inspiring piece on How pandas helped me appreciate brassicas


• Lynette Leman’s heartening struggles with no room in the brassica bed


• And Kirsty John’s opening foray into the perils of being an Eco Mum

Thank you to everyone who expressed their appreciation via a comment, FB like, Tweet or Google+. I can finally reveal that the winner of the public vote was…………………………….. Tom Carpen, with his Season’s Bleatings!

Carl Legge was a very popular runner-up and I know that many people will be enjoying his recipes for years to come.

From all the comments that were left I have used the random number generator to pick one winner, and it chose Catofstripes, who will receive a book from my shelf. I will be in touch with both winners shortly to arrange delivery of their prize.

It only remains for me to say that I have enjoyed Write Club 2011 immensely, and I hope you have to and that you’ll join me next year for Write Club 2012!

Reading about Bolivian families in the excellent World Vision greenhouse project, inspired me to write about the work of our sister charity, Social Change and Development (SCAD), in Tamil Nadu.

Tamil Nadu is in India’s south and roughly the same size as Great Britain. Just under half of the 70m population make up the rural poor where the average wage is just under £250 per annum.

It’s a dry, arid place and people living there are experiencing the effects of climate change with prolonged droughts, erratic monsoons and the resultant food security fears. Food prices run at about 30% inflation throughout the state.

This is why part of SCAD’s work focuses on the management of the land so that people, animals and the environment all benefit in the three districts in which it operates.

I spent six months out there last year and I would see organic kitchen gardens growing in villages everywhere. The scheme was started in 2002 in order to answer the need for accessible nutrition for everybody, especially mothers and babies.

This is how SCAD operates. It is a community-led approach, where help is only offered once a village has identified what problems it wants to solve first. Support is normally given through the network of 2,500 women’s self-help groups and this is how the kitchen gardens have rapidly grown to around 1,500 in total.

Villagers attend courses organised by the women’s groups on vegetable growing and composting as well as watering techniques like harvesting grey water. They are also shown how to secure their gardens with fencing to protect their produce from the local wild pigs.

Every year thousands of packets of seeds, purchased by SCAD, are sold for small amounts of money; those who can’t afford to pay are given some for free.

Two years ago a five-acre demonstration garden was set up at Anbu Illam – SCAD’s school for 75 differently-abled children. Along with training, the garden provides food for the children who are also involved in growing vegetables. Another 104 schools have kitchen gardens so a new generation is now growing up learning about the importance of food production and healthy eating.

Pictured above is a woman from Sivaloor village who poses with her harvest – bottle gourd, ridge gourd and radish – all nutritious and popular staples in the local diet.

The photo here is of Guru Lakshmi who is harvesting some okra in her kitchen garden. If there’s a glut or a good harvest then some of the villagers will sell their produce to make a little extra cash.

The women’s groups also spend time promoting the cultivation and education of other indigenous plants such as the Moringa or Drumstick Tree. Most gardens will have at least one of these species growing somewhere and the leaves, trunk, flowers and fruit are highly nutritious and help to increase haemoglobin levels.

Of course these vegetables are suited to tropical climes so hard for me to grow now I’m living back in London. Have you tried growing anything of these vegetables or a Drumstick Tree in your garden?

If you’d like to look at more photos then please look at our Flickr set.

As September draws to a close, our garden has suddenly seen an unexpected flush of late flowers alongside the ongoing performance from cosmos, antirrhinums and sweet peas.

From repeat bloomings on established roses – here the yellow rose by the shed

and the pale pink rambler along the front fence

- to the first late flowers on new plants raised or acquired in the past few months, most of which have only been in the ground for weeks.

A handful of flowers have sprung up from the Geranium ‘Orion’ plant that my mum gave us, which went into the ground about six weeks ago; with their long stems they nestle into the foliage of the cosmos behind. This should be spectacular next year, once it has found its feet.

Nearby, one of the clumps of Geranium sanguineum that I split and transplanted from the building rubble of the front garden earlier in the year has produced a single vibrant flower; its magenta petal edges seem to be lined in bright blue.

This pretty two-tone scabious was concealed beneath the leucanthemum, where it must have been blooming quietly for several weeks. It was the only plant to germinate from a packet of mixed seeds, and once planted out at the edge of the leucanthemum was quickly swamped beneath their rampant display.

Other plants are not quite so far advanced, their flowers still forming in a battle against the seasons.

This Eryngium planum ‘Blue Glitter’ was planted out as a small plug a couple of months ago and has grown tall through the summer and formed dozens of green flowerheads: will there be sufficient sun in the coming days to turn them blue before the frosts come?

One of the Gypsophila paniculata, raised from seed in the spring, is covered in tiny buds just beginning to burst open.

This tiny delphinium (one of 5 Delphinium grandiflorum chinese ‘Blue Pygmy’ plugs that arrived mid-summer and languished in pots before planting out ) has survived the slugs and is also budding up – will it bloom before the frosts?

The cardoon, meanwhile is also still holding its buds closed; another race against time.

I am thrilled by each new arrival, and anxious as to which of the remaining will fulfill their promise before the cold weather draws in, as we sit on the cusp of the seasons. But then, gardening is full of surprises and promises, both of which hold us in thrall.

A few years ago I planted my first Chinese artichokes (Stachys affinis), bought from the Organic Gardening Catalogue, in the clay soil of my allotment. Not one of them came up. I reckon they rotted away – they like a rich but well-drained soil but I think I read this after planting and so dolloped some spare sand on top of the soil hoping the worms would take it down for me. Maybe they don’t do that.

Chinese artichokes have many other names including Japanese artichokes, knotweed and crosnes – pronounced ‘crones’ – after Crosnes in France to which village they were brought from Asia in the nineteenth century. They are popular in France but haven’t caught on in England yet, on account, I read, of being fiddly to clean and looking like fat white grubs. This much is revealed in a five minute Internet search and then endlessly repeated on other websites along with some more tantalising snippets.

“Chinese poets compare them to jade beads and give them poetic names such as kan lu, meaning sweet dew”. (I believe this comes originally from Jane Grigson’s Vegetable Book).

That set me on fire with curiosity and I clicked and clicked in search of that Chinese poet who looked at some knobbly tubers and saw precious jewels. I haven’t found the poem yet but will just have to keep hunting. That’s probably because my reaction today on finally digging up my first homegrown tubers was, “they look like strings of pearls not fat white grubs|. I hadn’t thought that when the tubers for planting had arrived from Poynztsfield Nursery in Scotland. But today I was beguiled: it was raining and the tubers had a fragile translucence about them. So that Chinese poet and I are buddies you see!

I brought them home and washed them. Not fiddly at all, although I made use of a tip gleaned from an allotment neighbour. One day I was confessing to sometimes throwing away tiny potatoes because they were a fiddle to wash. “Don’t do that,” she chided, “Do as we did as children. We were given a bucket of water with a bit of sand or grit in it, all the little potatoes went in that and we swirled them around with a stick until they were clean. They were lovely when they were cooked!” (Ken Fern, I notice, gives the same advice in ‘Plants for a Future’.

We ate some tubers raw (they can be steamed, boiled, fried or eaten raw) and most of my family liked them, the verdict being that they were like firm bean sprouts or very mild radish and that they would be nice in a salad. The surprising thing about them is their crispness – they break easily with a pleasing snap. Jane Grigson enthuses over their flavour and is definitely someone to go to for advice on how to prepare them.

Every garden could have a patch of these in the border (the flowers are quite attractive purple mint-like spears). They are easy to grow and can be dug up as you want them, like Jerusalem artichokes, as they are frost hardy. I think my somewhat neglected tubers were a bit on the small size and probably could have done with some soil enrichment but no pests had gone for them all summer and they formed quite a carpet and kept the weeds down. Just replant a few after you harvest, for next year’s crop. All in all, a perfect candidate for the perennial vegetable garden. I’m keen on easy homegrown food like this, being convinced that many people who don’t have much time for growing annual vegetables could harvest a lot of food from a range of easier perennial vegetables.

If you are interested in growing Chinese artichokes I will have some ready to send out in mid October. They will cost £5 incl. p&p for 15 tubers. I also have the following perennial vegetable plants available at present:

Babington Leek (Allium ampeloprasum var. babingtonii) £5.00

Tree Onion (Allium cepa proliferum) £5.00

Wood Sorrel (Oxyria digyna) £4.00

Buckler-leaved Sorrel (Rumex scutatus) £4.00

Giant Chives (Allium schoenoprasum sibiricum) £4.00

Pink Purslane (Claytonia sibirica) £4.00.

Red Veined Sorrel – (Rumex sanguineus) £4.00

Musk Mallow (Malva moschata) £4.00

Salad Burnet (Sanguisorba minor) £4.00

Lovage (Levisticum officinale) £4.00



Email to backyardlarder@tiscali.co.uk to check on availability and new plants. I am also on Twitter. 
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One skill I’m trying to learn as a new gardener is identifying which seedlings are “weeds” and which are “plants”.

But the thing is, there are many weeds that are welcome guests in my garden. Like the violets that creep between the gaps in my paving, their pretty purple flowers nodding in approval at their narrow home, or the wild strawberries that wind their way through my flower beds. They may be wild, but they’re very much plants in the right place.

Of course not all the plants that arrive under their own steam plant themselves in just the right spot. But one of the best things about nice plants growing in the wrong place is that you can immediately convert them from weed to garden treasure by simply moving them to the right place. For example, my hellebores seem to love seeding into the cracks between the paving of the courtyard, rather than into the flowerbed. Of course these are plants in the wrong place – but are they really weeds, when a new Hellebore in my local garden centre will cost £10? (admittedly a few years on from my baby versions … and yes, I do live in London!!)

These plants are perfect for moving to a new spot: I know they are basically happy in my garden, and I have a pretty good idea from their parents what they will grow up to be. Moreover, where one seedling grows usually there’s more than one – giving me lots of plants that I can group together for maximum impact when they reach full size.
Similarly this cute fern is growing in my front path. It’s clearly not got a future there (if it grows to any size it’s going to get trampled), but it would be perfect by my pond if I can just winkle it out without leaving its roots behind.

As for the plants that I really do see as weeds: generally they’re plants available for sale at a garden centre near you: be it the Parrots Feather in my pond, or the Hypericum weaving its way indelibly through all my beds. Still, even these plants are not entirely unwelcome, but can contribute to the great cycle of life in the garden, either in my own compost heap or (for the tenacious Hypericum root) in the big brown council compost bin in the sky…

What’s your favourite non-weed weed, or most hated weed non-weed?

Ever since I first spotted the signs of damage on the horse chestnut trees by my house a few years ago, I’ve been keeping my eye on the seemingly inexorable increase of the culprit: the horse chestnut leaf miner. This year I’ve counted just 14 conkers on my local trees and the damaged leaves look worse than ever.

I picked a couple of the flatter leaves from my nearest tree and placed them on the small light box I have at home. The above picture is the result. The brown areas are the now dead leaf tissue eaten through by previous generations of the moth earlier in the year. The yellowy green almost circular ‘splodges’ are where the current generation reside. Look closely and you can just see a slightly darker larva shape within.

I cut open the leaf and managed to extract one of the larvae. It’s hard to imagine how such a small creature – impossible to photograph with my point and shoot camera and about 1cm in length – is exacting so much harm on one of the stateliest of our trees, but what it lacks in size it more than makes up for in numbers.

I was feeling quite depressed about this until I found out about some research being carried out by Bristol and Hull Universities. They’re mapping the extent of the leaf miner population and have developed a couple of smartphone apps – one for the iPhone and the other for android – to enlist your help. All you need to do is download the appropriate free app to your phone and then complete the simple form to load your data up to the project.

Don’t have a smartphone (like me), but would still like to help with the project? Don’t worry, you can register and submit your information via the Our Web of Life alien moth survey website. It’s very easy to do, though it helps if you know the postcode close to where the tree(s) are. A zoomable satellite picture helps you pinpoint your tree and you then just simply click on the appropriate picture to record your estimate of the damage, then another to say what the ground’s like underneath. Simple!

NB recording undamaged trees is just as important as recording those that are, not only for monitoring the spread of the leaf miner, but possibly also pinpointing any trees which may be resisting an attack in some way.

I think this is a brilliant use of technology which helps to gather far more data than could be managed by the researchers working on their own. Over 8,000 people have added their contributions already and you can see some of the preliminary results on the Leaf Watch blog. How about joining me and adding yours?

Today, Saturday, and the sun is defiant despite the fresh breeze swirling around the glistening leaves in my garden. The movement in the garden has stopped. Fruit has reached its final plump state, the flowers have retreated and only the rich dark leaves remain.

It signals a change. Time to bring the harvest indoors.

Often autumn is a season of reflection, where the back door only opens when the colours beckon. The reds and oranges of the harvest, the sunsets, the crops and the final weeks of the pumpkin.

It’s only my second year gardening. In my first year I started in May and hardly had time to draw breath as I worked from scratch to understand the myriad of rules set out by nature. This year I had time. Working quietly at first, I carefully planned my planting, feeding and soil care. Spring was good to me. It was patient, giving me time and space, allowing me to see the impact of my work – Seedlings gradually reaching for air and light, neatly lined up in response to my encouragement.

But then bang, before you know it you’re in May. The slugs are out, the weeds in charge, turn your back and the landscape changes. A fight to keep control. And when you lose control there is no recovery, not this year. Forget to water and plants wither, forget to plant and there’s no succession. And as things spiral, your early Spring hope fades and you have to accept the reality that you can’t always get what you want.

Until Autumn comes and you say, actually despite everything that life threw at me this year I was still out there. I discovered fresh peas, nurtured blackcurrants, rejuvenated the apple tree and cook my own garlic. My raspberries went wild, broad beans kept on giving and for every morning I overslept I had a morning watching the bumble bee going about its business as I drew breath in the morning sun.

There will be plenty to keep me ticking over until spring, but until then it’s time to embrace the warmth of autumn, my new favourite season.

I was 19 when I fist started volunteering regularly. I was fresh out of an intense first love that ended with the intense first and then the second dump and I was looking for something, anything to do. To distract me, just a little bit. And I answered an email and that turned out to be the most profoundly life-changing thing I have ever done. But it was a few years later when I finally started volunteering in a garden.

My partner and I started volunteering at Occombe Farm – a working organic farm run by the Torbay Coast and Countryside Trust. We’ve been since March 2010, the organic garden only a few months old, and we’ve seen it grow.

When we arrived it was a few raised beds and a gorgeous plan; now it has a forest garden in its infancy, a CSA scheme, a lovely productive raised bed system, a wartime allotment and three polytunnels. There has been a joy in seeing it grow and in being a tiny, tiny part of that.

Often I find myself talking to people who just don’t see the point in volunteering. Not them volunteering, I’m not looking for any converts, but me volunteering. Why would I waste my time when it doesn’t benefit me? Why would they worry so much about what I do with my life if they aren’t me? Anyway, they are missing the point.

Why do I sow seeds when I don’t get to sell or eat the vegetables? Why do I weed when I don’t get to stare at the results from my window? (Why don’t I weed my crops outside my window? That one I can’t answer.) Why do I build fences and plant trees when it isn’t going to add to my property value? Why do I show children – who aren’t my own! – how to grow and cook and eat?

Aside from being unbelievably fun you mean?

I do get to eat the vegetables on occasion. Sometimes I pay for them like everyone else and sometimes I take home bags or armfuls of unsellable stuff. This year I’ve made chutney from overgrown courgettes, green tomatoes and windfall apples. I’ve made a quick curry out of spinach that had massive holes in the leaves and I often take home chard that has been nibbled through or lettuce that has bolted.

The physical work I find to be incredibly rewarding and therapeutic. Rewarding because it’s easy to see what you have done. The ground cleared by hoe or by hand speaks for itself – it can’t be argued with. You can see your results and nothing can take that away.

Suffering from depression I also find that physical movement helps me regulate my moods; at least it helps me sleep at night. I see joy in a job well done, in knowing that I made a small part of the garden a better place for visitors and people who work there.

I’ve also managed to pick up skills that I never would have been able to try gardening at home. I have a balcony. I have managed to squeeze in a tree but it’s small. It didn’t need a mattock and I don’t use a hoe or a spade or a fork. I don’t have the space to construct an entire forest garden or to split hazel and weave it into a fence.

These are skills that are, yes, fun but also necessary when I finally get a grown-up garden. Sometimes I can even scale down ideas, like planting strawberries as a living mulch for my olive tree which acts as living shade for the strawberries in high summer – my own miniature and geographically confused forest.

The community we grow is also incredible. I’ve gardened with people from other countries, other continents even. We grow around language barriers, swap wisdom about the best way to eat herbs and share laughter over how British people have trouble pronouncing that famous Icelandic volcano.

There are people at the garden I see every month, some less often, some I know I’ll probably never see again. But we’ve all touched the same soil. Growers, students, trainees, volunteers, visiting experts… we’ve all been part of something bigger than ourselves. To me, that is the big, wonderful, amazing thing about volunteering.

I said earlier that I wasn’t looking for converts but if you think volunteering in a garden sounds like fun then look for an opportunity near you. You might not have an organic farm but there are other options like historic houses and gardens, or local hospices. When you find a garden that suits you it’s worth it.

I’ve been meaning to blog about my electric bike for ages, so Emma’s call for Write Club entries has spurred me on to getting finger to keyboard.

Although I like cycling I have some health problems, including a weak lower back (yes, this can affect my gardening addiction too, most annoying). Peddling puts pressure on the lower back and I found I had to stop cycling when back pain kicked off. These meant that I was more likely to wimp out and use a car, even for short distances. However, in 2009, being aware of the negative environmental impact of cars, particularly over short distances, and having made the decision to move back to Oxford, my partner and I took the leap and sold our car. We used the proceeds to purchase my electric bike.

I have now had an electric bike, a Smarta LX, for over two years now. I’ve now done close to 1,700 miles in that time, mainly around Oxford, though some longer trips, and I have come to rely on it utterly.

For a start, only when my back is really bad do I have to stop cycling. But at that point I have to stop most things. For the rest of the time, using the battery takes pressure off my lower back and means I still use the bike. But it is not just for health reasons that I’ve come to love my electric bike. Psychologically it is totally changed my responses to getting out and about.

For example, BE (before electric), I might not have gone out because it meant going home in the dark when I was tired, AE (after electric) I felt liberated knowing that if I was tired I could rely on the battery to get me home. BE I found going food shopping a pain, as it was hard to carry the shopping back, AE, food shopping is a breeze as I can fill the bike panniers and it takes the extra weight no problem (even with the battery weight).

BE, I found normal cycling a drag in inclement weather. I would more likely not want to go out, or would have to either use a bus and take ages, or get a taxi and pay lots of money. AE my attitude seems to have completely changed. I can get around quicker and it seems less of a bother to dash about between showers. I even cycled through much of the less snowy weeks of last winter.

It has also made getting to/from work easier, and opened up options for work. I freelance for Barracks Lane Community Garden, and as a freelance project manager in publishing, so it’s convenient way of getting to and from the garden and clients. Ok, you can do that on a normal bike. But it’s easier with electric, and having my bike has helped open the way to me setting up my own small gardening advice business, Oxford Sow & Grow. As I want to try and make gardening my whole life but don’t want to go back to having a car, the electric bike makes visiting clients and carrying around my tools straight-forward.

And since getting the electric bike, I cycle at least 10 times more than I did with a ‘normal’ bike. It’s more efficient, cheaper, and healthier. Healthier, you ask? But you have the battery to do the work! Ah ha – yes, I have the battery, but I don’t just rely on it; you can peddle at the same time or peddle without. So because I use the bike so much, often 20-30 miles over a week, I’m doing a lot more exercise than if I didn’t have the bike, because I’d end up just catching a bus and sitting around more.

I’ve found the electric bike to be very practical. The battery can be lifted on and off for easy charging. It’s great for getting up hills, no more getting off my bike and pushing it up a hill whilst my partner cycles by and waits for me at the top. I now cycle by him and wait at the top! It’s good for going longer distances. This wouldn’t apply to lycra-clad cyclists who would clearly go further and faster than I can on my electric bike, not the least because they are fit… But it has encouraged me to do more distance cycling, day trips and short cycling holidays because I know I can rely on it when my energy runs low later in the day and up the hills.

There are a couple of minor cons to an electric bike, such as if you get a flat tyre not every bike shop knows how to fix it. Electric bikes are not fast, I’m always being over-taken, though I suspect that is also because I’m a slow cyclist anyway. And for now you cannot charge your battery whilst peddling (I get asked that all the time), the technology isn’t there yet. And I admit that there are some things I cannot do with my electric bike. Even with our bike trolley, it’s hard to carry more than one large compost bag home from a garden centre. But we solve this problem being members of the Commonwheels car club, with pay-as-you-go driving, which we use occasionally when we have this need.

Getting an electric bike has made a massive difference in my life. I’m not ‘religious’ about not having a car. For a lot of people, living in smaller towns, villages and rural areas, you need a car just to get about daily life, as public transport is so bad or non-existent. But in urban areas I think an electric bike is an excellent transport alternative that people really should consider. I’ve read that the average non-electric bike only travels 100 miles in its lifetime; I don’t think electric bikes will suffer from the same problem. So my rallying cry, “go electric!”