Wild Abandon

Just arrived

Looking for sunshine

 The 'party favours' on the tables at our daughter & son-in-law's wedding were packets of wild flower seeds from West Sussex.   At the end of the evening there were several packets left behind and I was keen to gather them all up to scatter in the garden.


Who knows what happened - I only ended up with 2!  However plenty of people took some home and they are being spread over fields and flowerbeds across the land - some even got as far as Ireland.  I haven't heard how any of them are doing yet.


Once I had recovered from the amazing week of wedding preparation & celebration I sprinkled one pack of the seeds over the soil in a prepared flower pot.  The second packet I just sprinkled over a pretty ropey old flower bed.


3 weeks later seedlings in the pot are doing well.  With the flowerbed it's hard to detect what's a flower and what's a weed seedling at the moment.  Wild flowers don't need rich, moist conditions, in fact, I've read that they prefer rough conditions.  Well, the cosy flower potted seeds have germinated and are doing well and I may have to use them as my identification guide for anything that surfaces in the flower bed. I'm hoping both sites produce lots of flowers and that they self seed this autumn.  

The 'before' of the veg patch

We're going to build a vegetable garden at the top of the garden, basically all the shrubs you see in the mid-foreground of this photo. As it's on a hill we want to create level ground so the approach will have a bank which I want to be full of wild flowers. Introducing them into the garden now could mean they get there of their own accord.  


I'm also intending to have a wall of roses and an arched gateway into the vegetable garden.  I have a beautiful, tall yellow rose with an old fashioned scent that grows infront of the garage.  I would love to have a wall of these roses at the entrance to the vegetable garden so am trying to propigate them.

Can you see the red buds?  They're there!

My advisor - my 76yr old mum - says to dip them in hormone rooting powder and then stick them in the ground.  That what she does and her roses thrive.  She also sits next to the rose 'nursery' smoking and I reckon the lack of clean air kicks their survival mechanism into full gear and they grow like crazy to cope!


Mine are doing okay - if you look carefully you can see little red buds starting to emerge.  I have a little chat with them on a daily basis - I reckon roses are quite sensitive, fragile spirits who need lots of reassurance and then cope brilliantly in difficult situations.  The summer so far should provide them with plenty of opportunity to overcome adversity!

Smell this.

Sambucus something aka elder

Last May I made my first ever batch of elderflower cordial - easy peasy and totally delicious, but I only made 2 litres, which was drunk very quickly.

Whilst I was delighted when our daughter got engaged in June last year, I was disappointed that the elderflowers were over as I thought little bottles of homemade cordial on the wedding breakfast table would have been a wonderful touch.  Anyway, the day was gorgeous without it - but I have been determined to make enough cordial this year to last longer than a month!

The first batch soaking up the sun

Cheers!

The problem was getting enough bottles.  I love those olive oil bottles with the flip cap - but had only managed to collect 4 of them.  Someone suggested old screw top white wine bottles - perfect!  Had to do some extra work emptying them, of course, but it was worth it in the end.

I have proudly given away a few litres of the stuff but now I've discovered a recipe for elderflower vodka!  I went to pick some flowers (they're much later this year due to the rain) but they smell a bit 'over' - so that will have to wait 'til next year.  Anyway, I've found a recipe for elderberry & wild cherry syrup that I want to try so I'd better leave flowers for that (and the birds, of course).

PS I've planted a Sambucus nigra - which is the dark leaved/pink flowered version of the elder, can you make cordial from that and will it be pink?  I really hope so, but will have to wait until next May to see.

Recipe:  via http://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/elderflowercordial_6465

Elderflower cordial

Veg

in season

Homemade elderflower cordial is so much better than anything you can buy. Serve with sparkling water for a refreshing drink or sparkling wine for a delicious cocktail.

Ingredients

• 30 elderflower heads
• 1.7litres/3 pints boiling water
• 900g/2lb caster sugar
• 50g/2oz citric acid (available from chemists)
• 2 unwaxed oranges, sliced
• 3 unwaxed lemons, sliced

Preparation method

1. Gently rinse over the elderflowers to remove any dirt or little creatures.
2. Pour the boiling water over the sugar in a very large mixing bowl. Stir well and leave to cool.
3. Add the citric acid, the orange and lemon slices, and then the flowers.
4. Leave in a cool place for 24 hours, stirring occasionally.
5. Strain through some muslin and transfer to sterilised bottles.

A Forest Garden

I got really excited earlier this year as I was collecting nettles (see earlier blog).  Years ago I trained as an aromatherapist and the therapeutic properties of plants and flowers have always excited and inspired me. I love being able to forage not just for food but also for plants that have healing properties.  As I  did some research in the garden and read up on plants, I began to realise that we had the makings of an amazing site.

How wonderful it would be, I thought, to wander in my own garden with my grandchildren picking foods and plants to eat and to make tinctures, tonics and ointments. Talk about planning for the future!

A few days later I was reading an article in Permaculture Magazine on Forest Gardening and suddenly all my thoughts came together.  This is exactly what my garden should be!

It's a jungle

A Forest Garden is somewhere between a woodland and an orchard.  Perfect, this was an old orchard and before that, woodland, all it's got now are a few apple trees and a damson we planted plus wild cherry trees struggling in the jungle that is 'woodland'.  A Forest Garden is exactly what this garden wants to be.

So now I'm off.  I've got a couple of books, am going on a course, I'm learning about permaculture too and my focus is to create a vibrant, thriving, bio-diverse environment that not only feeds us but is a balanced, sustainable environment for all forms of nature.

This IS my Secret Garden Project and I feel like I have finally come home.  When first I saw this place I felt it was just waiting for someone to cut through the overgrowth and allow life to blossom again.  

What's in there?

Now I have a vision, it is time to break it down into something I can actually achieve!  Being a coach it's interesting to observe the intuitive process - the inspiration, the ideas, the willingness to learn and research - and see how, when the motivation is there, setting goals is very easy and a natural consequence of creative thought.  

The Moriarty of the Garden: Rampant Prunus laurocerasus

It's also very helpful to understand the process and the stages of relationship, even the relationship with my garden.  Right now I am in the Honeymoon stage of the project - I can see the potential of the garden, I'm full of enthusiasm, I feel like I have come home etc.


So I will eventually hit the Power Struggle.  This is an inevitable stage, the frustration, perfectionism, disappointment, where the demands (my own and that of the garden) can become overwhelming, a result of starting a new path of growth and evolution   It doesn't matter whether the power struggle is with nature (although I have already identified my arch enemy: Prunus), myself or others, I am going to hit it and it is where I get to choose whether I want to be right or be happy!  More on that at a later date!




Then there's the Dead Zone to look forward to:  roles, rules (OMG is that going to be the local council???) and many other layers of relationship - all the challenges here will be about surrender.  How willing will I be to surrender and allow the process to teach me what to do next rather than trying to dictate the pace?

Simply beautiful

My ultimate goal?  To create an Enchanted Realm where love in all its mystery will thrive.  


Big vision - baby steps.


•all photos by wpmmillar

An apothecary's garden

A shady bunch

I recently was introduced to Twitter and have discovered a whole new world!  One of the people I 'follow' is Lucy Jones  (@myrobalanclinic), a medical herbalist.  She writes a wonderful blog on herbs and their uses and recently shared the benefits of Nettles.

Looking full of vigour

 I was so inspired by her blog I went out and found a wonderful supply of nettles in the garden (which probably tells you how neglected its been) and followed her recipe for Winter Nettle tonic.  The ingredients are dried nettles, organic oranges and dried apricots soaked in organic red wine for three weeks.  This is then strained and bottled and kept for winter when the recommended daily dose is a desertspoon 2x day.

Soaking

I am sure the healthy ingredients in the fruit and the nettles will help - but 2 desertspoons of red wine every day will certainly make those dark winter days a little more bearable!

A little review

It's been a while!  Camera problems and general inertia, but Spring is back and the pond is starting to develop.  We had some frogspawn!  Although a little visit from a pair of ducks messed things up a little, there are a few tadpoles wriggling about in the water, so hopefully that bodes well for next year's spawning.  (Apparently frogs - like salmon - come back to their place of birth).

Plants have gone in - grasses, willow even a giant rhubarb, plus oxygenators in the pond along with waterlillies, irises and other mysterious lovelies.  

Will try to get better pictures soon!

Enjoy

Ta daaa!

Here is the final product - a beautiful pond with decking.  It looks like a bit like a diving board now, but after planting has taken hold this will become a beautiful quiet spot to observe the pond's life evolving.  We already have our first visitors/residents (other than Asha having a drink),  2 Waterboatmen have been spotted skating on the surface of the water and then diving deep.  For more info:  http://www.buglife.org.uk/discoverbugs/bugofthemonth/Waterboatmen

Planting begins at the end of October.  I'll have to borrow Granny's waders to get in and dig into the banks.  But isn't it beautiful?  Once the plants are in and things start to grow - its going to be so much fun next Spring as things start to unfold.

New(t) Hotel

The pond liner needs to be protected from anything sharp, so first a membrane is laid on the earth, then a thick layer of sand and sharp sand is put down to act as a cushion and protect the liner should any stones surface underneath and also when the water pushes the liner down into the earth.

The liner is then placed in position - very heavy, as you can see Asha had to be called in to help.

We then decided to pump out the well to put water into the pond - only to find that, despite the wettest August ever - there was only about 6ft of water in there.  We decided to pump it in anyway as it is run off water from the land and any microbacterial life will help to populate the pond and break down the chlorine from the tap water we will also have to use.

So the pond is now half full and the earth is being bashed into the sides.  Once that is in position all around, we can add more water and then the next exciting part starts - planting and the observation deck.  We can hear the frogs, newts packing up their old residences and heading our way - the latest luxury living space is nearly ready!  Any Kingfishers???

All the hard work done by Jon Seddon www.wpaving.co.uk