If you want to be happy for the rest of your life get a garden. That is my advise anyway. One of the thinks that I love about gardening as opposed to any other hands on creative thing I do is the unpredictability of it you can control only up to a certain point but mother nature is what she is and for as many disappointing things that happen there are far more wonderful surprises. Plants popping up from nowhere from seeds that were stuck to wildlife. Gardens are a beautiful thing to love. My style of gardening has evolved over the years (I will tell you more about that in my book, shh keep it under your hats I am writing a book).
How you design your garden is as personal a choice as the clothes you wear and you really should have a garden that works with how you live. If you are bbq regulars then build one in as a permanent fixture and make sure that you have a good seating area to enjoy your food. I f you want your garden to work for you section off an area for a kitchen garden. It is up to you but here are some of my tips to help you on your gardening way.
Use Junk something that would be quite ugly on the street becomes quite beautiful in a garden setting such as this old chimney pot it makes a great garden sculpture and is a great way to attract wildlife such as hedgehogs to your garden and spiders to eat any nasties on your plants.
Make Sections just because you want to grow some vegetables you don’t have to make your whole garden a kitchen garden. These raised bed are thrown together with cheap offcuts of wood but they do the job.
Make Mother Nature Work For You plants can be expensive especially if you have a large space to fill so buy things that self seed and grow like wildfire such as Aquilega and as you can see from the images above they come in a variety of shapes and colours.
Aged is Better a great way to add character to a garden especially in its early days is old stuff and aged terracotta looks way better than new. You can spread this process up by lightly smearing the pot with live yogurt.
Protect Your Fruit after you have gone to all that trouble to grow yummy fruit you need to protect it from the birds so get you net out.
Weed the Lazy Way weeding is the least fun part of gardening so try and combat against weeds by choosing plants that have great ground coverage such as forget me nots.
I hope that this has whetted your gardening appetite.
Take Care
Nicolette xo
Sarah Mason Photography
Some lovely photos here Nic! Wish I had them green fingers… x
Nicolette Lafonseca-Hargreaves
Thank you Sarah I am sure you are just being kind xo