update

It’s been a testing process but the stable conversion is now nearly finished; final electrics and plumbing should be completed this week… everthing has been difficult in the relentless rain and mud that has prevailed. It will be a happy day when the turfing is installed around the stable and glasshouse and I can actually start to plant up the beds.

The steps are done – modelled on recreating a beautiful moment at Sissinghurst :- )

And as building regs required a soakaway to be dug, entailing substantial invasive digging anyway, we decided to use the opportunity to install a subterranean tank to harvest rainwater. I had to use all my powers of imagination to hold the dream of an organic green paradise while the works were underway!

It’s all a far cry from the impenetrable jungle of just 18 months ago…. and I sometimes miss its wild improbability right in the centre of town, guilty for creating such devastation – but creation requires destruction and this project ensures protection from future developers and continuation into the future as a precious secret hortus conclusus. I must hold my nerve!

s.l.o.w.l.y…

Work has now started on the stable development, hampered by the annoying discovery that the existing drain is no longer viable. But the outside has been repointed and the steps to the upper garden are nearly finished. Adjoining the glasshouse area, the seating area is nearly fully slabbed, with planting pockets and beds all marked out.

stone harvest

Bank Holiday Monday’s efforts – removing a LOT of stones from the newly created planting bed in the glasshouse base. Then the satisfying job of adding compost lugged from my precious heap in Hampshire (sadly depleted as one of the workmen “helpfully” added several sacks of precious black gold to the skip before I realised….. )

There were very few worms in the reclaimed soil, but hope that the addition of leaf mould and compost will encourage new life and structure over time. Meantime, I go about looking for stray worms to rehome… :- )

brick by brick

The glasshouse brick (half reclaimed to match old walls…) base is now complete. Digger still sifting out huge pile of debris to be broken into hardcore but also a good amount of topsoil emerging from the chaos.

If you look carefully, you can see the tips of some surrounding dreaming spires of Stamford…

progress

After much drama entailing the delivery of massive steel beams and two lorry loads of cement being wheelbarrowed down the lane by a procession of 6 men (one of whom fell in and had to be rescued!), the foundations for the glasshouse are finally in place.

… and the reclaimed york paving has been skillfully laid in the upper terrace – planting areas still bare but at least now not covered in rubble. Rotten fence removed and ugly block wall painted by me – not perfect but much better and will anyway soon be covered in trachelospermum jasminoides (in my dreams…) I’m desperate to get plants in, but restraining myself until the wall has been surfaced and the mess cleared so as to give a proper perspective – and time to feed the soil.

delicious surprise

With all the chaos of the land clearing and digging, I had abandoned all thoughts of any harvest this year. But the ancient fig tree was quietly doing its thing in the background…

well well…

All my life I have dreamed of having a victorian style glasshouse and having the space for one was a big factor in moving here. The process towards its realisation continues to be wearisome (planning permission…), expensive (landscaping/ground works) and complicated (big old wall/structural engineer/archaelogist(!) – not to mention finding not one, but two old wells when clearing the ground…

But the new little retaining wall in the top garden is underway, reclaimed york paving ordered…

…and the opening in the brick wall where steps will go down to the lower garden has been made 🙂

All Change!

Well, a lot has happened. Moved (after 40 years!) from a medieval house in a Hampshire village to my late parents’ C17th town house in Stamford. Builders, walls knocked down, dust, chaos, consolidating two entire households into one – charity shops very happy!

And of course that all meant leaving behind my beloved garden and allotment.

Now I have a much bigger space, a “secret” south-facing walled and overgrown wilderness, including a row of ancient still-productive pear trees. Daunting but exciting and wonderfully full of potential.

My dear mother had created a beautiful and delightful garden here over many years. This is one of her paintings of it as it was:

Poor Orpheus fell over in a torrential rainstorm. He was found burrowing towards the Underworld and had to be rescued.

Now, three months later, we are settled in and making a start on the garden… yesterday the landscapers arrived with their digger….

It’s amazing what a man and a machine can do in a day!! Over the past weeks, I have been labouring in the upper garden to remove the tree stumps; tiring and dirty work but gloriously satisfying. An excellent way to get familiar with the ground. More broken forks…

to be continued/ :- )

unexpected harvest

Doing some much-needed weeding, I unearthed some unexpected and still perfect Orla potatoes which, alongside a kuri squash and the first reddened Sigaretta di Bergamo, will make a lush supper – with bay leaf, garlic and thyme also from the huerto. Just a good glug of olive oil and seasoning and it will now sit on the Aga with a lid until tender and slightly caramelised.

Also found these last few little rosebuds & chrysanths I had forgotton I planted. A nice surprise.

gratitude

today’s harvest for tonight’s supper

Three types of courgette, rose de roskoff onions, garlic and waxy Orla potatoes – chop, add bay + lemon + rosemary & lots of olive oil with a splash of water, season, mix, put lid on and simmer for about 45 minutes. Boil runner beans for 5 minutes then drain and finish with butter.

Serve with large glass of Sancerre rosé.

Oh, and put dahlia in jar on table for a smile.

hot heights of summer – all from tiny seeds…

busy bee

Forage in the borage…

golden sweet & parsley plugs

These yellow mange tout peas are so easy to grow and absolutely delicious. Sown in double rows into a length of plastic guttering in the greenhouse, they were more than ready to plant out into the pigeon-proof sanctuary of the fruit cage; roots tangled below, desperate to get into the ground.

roots matted at bottom of guttering – plants needing more nutrition to grow healthily

staked and interspersed with dead blackcurrant branches, ideal to support upward growth

newly planted out multi-sown plugs of curly parsley

bean feast

fresh Czar & Borlotti beans, with aromatics : carrots, onion, garlic, sage, bay and rosemary – all from the huerto

orange

mellowing

colour

clearing

Time to clear the broad beans to make space for the winter kales that have been growing on in the greenhouse. Surprising how long it all takes, but very satisfying to go from a post-productive, weedy and dead leaf covered bean patch to a neat butterfly-proofed brassica bed.

old broad beans (celeriac in front)

old broad bean plants chopped and composted

Done!

pickings

Rose de Roscoff onions, Sunshine beans & early autumn raspberries

Charlotte

Red Baron, Snowball, Garlic & Setton drying in the greenhouse