Well March was a month. Covid reigned supreme here and let me tell you that whilst for Andy, who go anti virals and salted through it really, for me it was no joke and I am only just beginning to feel anywhere near close to normal. But with that we had some beautiful weather and I spent three days in London for the Garden Press Event and where I visited an old favourite, The Chelsea Physic Garden. It’s a garden I love but there is also a lot to say about it so hold tight and that will come separately. The woodland garden at the Chelsea Physic Garden In reality it doesn’t feel like much was ac ..read more

Last week again the Horticultural Trades Association said, again, that a ban on peat use in horticulture would be disastrous for the horticulture industry, and added into that that it could also risk food security. which made my ears perk up as that felt like an inflammatory comment. My spidey sense told me it aws likely propaganda but I needed to do some research and look into what they meant. Now it’s zero surprise to anyone I hope that lots of plants that end up in our garden centres start off life as plug plants, which are grown onto firstly 9cm and then 1-3 lite pot sizes. Indeed gardener ..read more

Here we are at the beginning of April and the third Peat Free April. And I think it’s fair to say the backlash has begun. In the last month or so the way propaganda is used internationally to change the narrative of a situation has awoken many to the use of propaganda but can we say we see it in the gardening world, and is it obvious or is it hidden? Or does it do what the propagandist wants it to do, and cause confusion, especially to new gardeners or to people finding the sustainability in gardening conversation difficult to see through? I would argue it’s mainly the last two, and that inter ..read more

Well it’s been a torrid month. Covid, storms Dudley, Eunace and Franklin all one on top of each other, and the general feeling of winter being long and especially dire this year, has meant that as short as it is, February has dragged here and in the Edible Bristol gardens. But there are signs of spring being just around the corner and whilst I refuse to get overexcited until mid March at the earliest, being in a new garden and seeing things appear has brought a fair quantity of joy. Whilst the back garden is full of alliums and tulips starting to poke their heads above the soil, in the front s ..read more

I walked into a Wilko’s store last week to the sight of an entire aisle filled with chemicals and poisons. It just happened to be Wilko but it could just as easily been virtually every garden centre, supermarket or DIY store across the country. Ant killer, slug killer, small rodent killer, propane for burning weeds, weed killer, fungicides and insecticides and just around the corner in the next aisle were bird boxes, bug hotels, butterfly homes. The irony was extraordinary. But let’s go back to the chemicals. Because yes of course it is annoying when your roses get black spot and aphids are on ..read more

Over the last few years the concept of food citizenship has been a widely discussed topic. Food is generally commodified, with little thought of who grew it, where it was grown or in what conditions, and food citizenship alters that mindset. Citizenship asks that food to be seen as a resource, grown by a real person and that everyone in the chain of that food be treated with thought and compassion. It creates a need to discover the food system and look at how the citizen can have a relationship with the grower, the store in which it was bought, and therefore a deeper relationship with the food ..read more

When we first began working on Incredible Edible Bristol we knew that skill sharing was inevitably going to be the most important part of what we did, and whilst that has somewhat been scuppered by the pandemic and people’s ability to get together and indeed at times for us even to be able to access the public facing gardens, it’s importance has never faltered and has always driven us on. It makes me personally sad to hear regularly that people struggle to find good, affordable horticultural education. Whilst I was fortunate to work for a business that for many years supported me in my formal ..read more

Whilst it is great to see the consultation published about banning peat for horticultural use, we are likely all aware of the beginnings of a backlash from certain parts of the industry. Whilst sad, it’s an inevitability, and so rather than focusing on the negative I thought it might be a good idea to talk about my experiences of turning nurseries from conventional, peat based compost, over to peat free compost. This was a process I did twice in the south east, firstly with the large, 50+ acre nursery I ran and then on a smaller scale on my own small herb growing nursery. i will share both as ..read more

It has recently come to my attention that there is an article from the think tank Policy Exchange that is undermining the cultural work around plants that Kew Gardens has been undertaking in the last couple of years but before I go into that I’d like to set some context. Culturally plants have been important to human beings for millennia. Of course they are-we as humans are a part of the ecosystem and evolution would not have presented us on the earth unless there were things we could eat and use as medicine. Whilst we, today, know and understand those plants as a part of the Linnaen system, a ..read more

The weather is grey, and wet, with rain coming most nights and drizzling on and off most days. Underfoot it’s soggy and walking on the grass feels treacherous and horribly slippery. The plants are all looking at what can only be described as their worst, some with old tatty leaves hanging on by a thread, but mostly they are the skeleton the a garden that has definitely not had a gardeners touch for several years. In the oddly warm winter what I am learning is the weeds that are obviously at home here, as they appear, even during the darkest days of the year. Goosegrass is making itself known a ..read more