BRING ME A SHRUBBERY

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In other travels, if you enjoy walking along costal paths, I can highly recommend the walk between St Ives and Zennor. It is treacherous in places, but that only makes it more fun. The views are spectacular, the fauna and flora are just beautiful, and you may even spot a seal or two...

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I recently visited the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset over a hot summers weekend. We walked the costal path to Studland Bay, and the flowers were incredible. You could smell the wild thyme on the sea breeze, and the sea was the most amazing blue. It was more like being abroad than in the UK!

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Today I discovered the Hampshire lavender fields and wild flower meadows. Beautiful!

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We surrounded ourselves in beautiful countryside today, with rolling hills of green and vast expanses of corn fields nearly ready to be harvested. Water cress farms, streams full of fat trout and country pubs helped to lift our heavy hearts.

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A sad, sad day for the UK

I am broken hearted by the result of the Europe referendum. The gulf between our cities and rural areas has been highlighted today. The cities wanted to remain in Europe and continue with our political relationship, creating a united front of compassion and empathy, and the other areas have voted in favour of self interest and personal gain.

This whole referendum has been horrible, the whole tone of it nasty and cruel, particularly with regards to immigration. I know not a single person who voted to leave, which says a lot about my friends and family, but just brings home again that you only surround yourself with like-minded people.

We will have to be the change we want to see, and nurture a new era of love and acceptance. It’s going to be a rocky road for the next few years. I can’t believe I’m no longer a European!! (sob)

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June. The month of roses, plant sales and general loveliness; all your hard work during spring is finally paying off, the flowers are blooming and vegetable plants are producing!

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This week at work we thought a lot about recycling. We made bird feeders out of old milk cartons, painted and strung them up in our willow archway. We also painted an old pallet, added some strips of wood to make shelves, and then added drainage holes to old tin cans. Then we filled them with soil and herbs to go on the pallet shelves. Look rather effective!

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Other than my cat finding it an irresistible dancefloor, my square metre garden has been a success so far! I have planted peas, spinach, rocket, spring onions (now lost to the ‘dance of Sheba’), beetroot, mustard leaf, baby carrots, radishes and rainbow chard. I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to grow their own veg but either have little space or inclination, or have finally accepted that they will never be self sufficient.

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May at the Therapy Garden.

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Mayday Walk

I went on a lovely walk on Mayday, through the heavily ploughed fields and copses near my house.

The chalky fields really remind me of a vast Zen garden, especially when you are stood right in the middle. The lines go right around trees in a circle, and you could almost pretend that have been shrunk to miniature size and it’s actually a mini bonsai tree... (noon don’t step on me arghhh)

The woods around me are full of wild garlic which I must pillage soon and make some wild garlic pesto. The smell is incredible!

And a gratuitous shot of a lovely house. All in all, a very nice walk. We have some lovely countryside around us, mainly privately owned, vast farmed and monoculture fields, but there is the occasional pretty spot. 

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RHS Wisley

I finally managed to visit RHS Wisley, despite the fact it is only 30 minutes from my house. It did not disappoint, despite the chilly weather. 

It is the time of year to hide in warm places, and even though the colourful bedding displays outside looked very tempting and did hold a good ten minutes of my attention, I have to admit that I did spend an awful lot of time in the tropical greenhouse, which is the size of a cathedral by the way.

Wisley was the first of the RHS gardens, and its scale is phenomenal. You need a whole day to go around it, but you’ll have your mind blown in 4 hours and will definitely run out of storage on your camera. Visit if you can! 

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Is this ok? I’m not sure if it is ok, but I have a big jar of tadpoles! There was so much frogspawn in the pond at work that we took out a small handful of eggs and put them in a big old sweet jar with some rocks and pond weed, and took them into the classroom for our students to watch develop. They love them. I love them. There are 13 in total and we have named 12 of them after the months of the year and the 13th one is called Jeff. Jeff is great, what a character. I’ll be sad when its time to let them go, but you’ve gotta cut the apron strings sometime.

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Anemone nemorosa.

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Pea Wigwams and Other Tales

Today I made a couple of pea wigwams using hazel branches and some twine. They worked out pretty well.

So easy to make were they in fact, that I recommend having a go at making one if you have an empty sunny spot in your garden. You could even create a sweet pea tepee with a gap for a door! Go on.

In other news, those 200 bulbs that I planted last November are coming up a treat (phew!).

Thank goodness for that... No pressure or anything.

We also have bulbs coming up at work that no one can remember planting, but they look great. Perhaps it started off as 1 rogue tulip that has naturalised over time!

Things are certainly starting to pick up pace in the garden now; potato trenches are being dug, last of the seeds are being sown in the polytunnels, things are finally going in the ground. Fingers crossed for no late frosts.

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Not so much haute couture but eat couture. Perfect for weddings.

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It’s that time of year again, when you dust off your National Trust passes and start exploring again! This picture was taken in Hinton Ampner, Hampshire.

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Paper Pot Makers

At The Therapy Garden we try to reuse and recycle as much as possible, and our wooden paper pot makers are a fantastic way of recycling newspaper. 

Not only are the pots incredibly therapeutic to make (you end up making hundreds when you only need a few) and good for the environment, there is the added bonus that when the seedlings are large enough to be planed outside you can plant the whole thing! The newspaper will naturally decompose.

We used ours to sow peas and sweet peas, but you can use them for any seed that is quite large and you only need 1 per pot. I wouldn’t recommend for fine seed as I don’t think it would be very easy to prick out the seedlings. 

They seem to have worked pretty well so far!