Wight Cottage Garden

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My garden has become my passion so I decided to start a gardening blog. I’m a novice gardener at best, but I love it and wanted to keep a record of my efforts.
My garden has come a long way in the last 7 years, but now I’m finally happy with the layout and am looking forward to everything maturing.

Gardening has always been in my life in some form, the satisfaction of planting a seed, watching it germinate and then hopefully and finally see it come to fruition, plants fascinate me. However it was only last year (2013) that I made plans to make the garden my own. My daughter was growing up and had no interest with what we had provided for her in the garden, preferring to go out on her bike or play music in her room. My husband was heavily involved in his band outside work, leaving me with little freedom of choosing extra curricular activities for myself. Not intentionally I might add, it just worked out that way. So early last Spring I thought to myself what can I do that I enjoy, that doesn’t require me to leave the house so I’m always here for my daughter. I was pondering this while looking at the awful corner of the garden that we could never seem to do anything with. Bushes grew too thick and we could never mow the grass properly. It also housed my daughters play house which had become a dumping ground for all those things you haven’t got room for in the house but don’t know what to do with. Most people would call that an attic but our cottage doesn’t grant us that luxury. It was then that I was struck with the perfect idea, I knew exactly what I wanted… A veggie patch… My own veggie patch. The idea being that it would be my place to come and relax doing what I loved, while hopefully cutting down the food bills by growing some of our own. The desire to have my own space fuelled my fire to make it happen and I set to work. I worked on it every weekend and by the end of last summer it was ready but too late for any veg that season.

While the rest of garden bloomed with flowers that I had grown from seed I suddenly realised that I knew nothing about growing veg. I had very kindly been given some sprouts and leeks, the latter proved to provide us an excellent harvest. Such pleasure I took going out on Christmas morning and pulling up a few leeks that we had with our Christmas dinner. I had hoped to do the same with the Sprouts but caterpillars had bested me and I became acutely aware of the amount of pests and diseases that can quickly thwart your efforts.
Christmas passed and I was inpatient for the new growing season to start, wanting to so badly to fill my empty raised beds, to once again experience that amazing feeling of accomplishment when you can eat something you have grown.

My Christmas gift of a heated propagator has been a life saver for starting seeds off early, and if you can afford one I would highly recommend them.

This year is still a learning curve and we will see how it goes. We are in no way living off what I can grow, maybe one day I will have a decent green house and can grow things all year round; but for now my simple polycarbonate greenhouse and mini greenhouses (plus every window ledge in the house) is serving me well.
So far already this year I am growing beetroot, Pak Choi, onions, asparagus, potatoes and sweet corn. Some of the Pak Choi has already been enjoyed in a delicious stir-fry.
The usual suspects are also ever present, Tomatoes, Cucumbers and a selection of cut and come again salads. The first strawberries have also been harvested.

Not one to rest on my laurels and just be happy, this Spring with the help of my husband we started a new project…

This was also another corner of the garden that had become desolate and hopeless. The only spend for this project was the Gazebo (a very naughty treat) the cushioning, fixings and some paint. The pallets were free, and the covers I made out of a lot of spare material I had and the curtains too.
Fuelled by the prospect of warm romantic summer evenings, my husband set to work straight away (no nagging!)
I am sat on it right now while typing this blog, with a little drink to one side feeling quite luxurious.

Love your garden! X x x

One more thing before I go… I’ve managed to change my pink Hydrangea to Blue…

• 19 Jun, 2014
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