Emma Cooper

This was the first year that Pete really got involved in the gardening. He helped clear the garden for spring planting, and bought his own herb plants to grow in old recycling bins (many of which did very well). The new bed we made produced so many new potatoes we are still eating them (and there are some in potato barrels I haven’t even unearthed yet).

The 2011 garden layout

But as we sat in the garden over the summer we realised it hadn’t quite worked out – it looked a bit of a messy jungle, and there were too many plants in containers suffering from the dry weather. We hatched a new garden plan, and now that winter is finally on its way and perennials are becoming dormant, it is time to put it into action.

It isn’t a proper plan. We don’t have drawings, we have an idea. And it’s a bit fluid. But we’re going to turn the main part of the garden into a forest garden, with a mixture of plants at all levels that will hopefully coexist. Almost all of the perennials will be planted in the ground. The new bed is staying, and will be home to perennial greens for the chickens (and for us, if we fancy a few leaves!); the smaller concrete block beds are being dismantled.

I had already done a bit of work in the current forest garden corner, clearing out brambles and other weeds and making sure the rhubarb can breathe in spring. Kiwi Issai has been living there in a pot; I found a place for it in the ground which hopefully it will enjoy. I have also been clearing the beds.

On Sunday I moved several perennial herbs out of the one furthest from the house, and began dismantling it and relocating the blocks. They’re going to mark out the boundaries of one large, raised bed. It won’t be as high as the existing beds, and it will have access points made of blocks (Pete is calling them ‘groins’).

Once we have the new layout in place, I will spread out of the compost from the raised beds and start deciding where to plant out the plants that are currently in pots. We have plenty of bark chips left for mulching, and there are ground cover plants that are already self-seeding or spreading.

I also have two new arrivals to relocate – self-seeded elderberries, which I have pruned to keep them bushy and to make life easier for them once they have been moved:

The large raised bed will remain, giving me a small plot for annual vegetables close to the kitchen. I suspect the Grow Dome will get a redesign, too. Its raised bed is very deep and contains a lot of compost which could be of better use elsewhere. It remains very dry, and I may have better luck growing in large containers with very limited drainage. I’m still pondering that one; I might try my hand at aquaponics.