Having spent a lot of time in Europe, I am really inspired by French, English and Italian gardens. I’ve always wanted to have a lovely potager garden but I also love the look of Tuscan gardens, but just haven’t had the budget to buy all the hedging…so I devised a wee plan about two years ago.
I’ve been taking cuttings from my mother’s buxus hedge for the past two years and growing it on. I have a little grassy area in front of our raised beds that is a tricky shape and furthermore, our artichokes have divided into four plants…so I’m going to create a hedge border around these gardens to create a potager look and then plant out the artichokes in these beds in autumn (you can see some artichokes right at the back of this picture). For the moment, these beds will serve as extra lettuce beds. I will then dig up all the surrounding grass and put a lime chip path in its’ place to create a Tuscan look. The path will also run down in front of our herb garden.
I have a long way to go to prepare the soil however…I’m not a big fan of using weedkillers in the garden, and have found the best way to kill the grass is by placing seaweed over the grass. Not only is it great as a fertiliser, but I think the salt in the seaweed must kill off the grass. I’ll then dig it over in a week or so and add plenty of organic material:
- leaf mould
- home-made compost
- horse manure
And within a month or so, it should be perfect for planting out some lettuce seedlings that I planted from seed a couple of days ago....This picture illustrates the garden in its' infancy. And you can just see my broccoli on the left doing extremely well along with the snow peas and broad beans which are just going to town! Right time for a vino I tink - I have blisters from digging today, so I have definitely earnt it tonight!
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