Gardening in 2050?

* I was invited to this year’s Gardeners’ World Live and provided with a pair of tickets to the show, therefore all my posts will be marked as 'Ad’ though as usual my views and opinions are very much my own.

As I stepped into the shed, which was the entrance to this garden, I knew I was going to like it. They say first impressions count, and this to do list (who doesn’t love a list?!) and mix of vintage items, along with the humour had me hooked. Entering through a shed was definitely a point of difference so hats off to the garden’s designer Vivien Mosely, and of course to The Botanical Gardener who brought the design to life.

The garden offers a glimpse into the future, so the blurb said.

It’s set in 25 years time, where water resources are limited and the landscape is parched. Which unfortunately may be a realistic outlook if this summer and it’s four heatwaves (so far) are anything to go by, unless we get better at capturing water, as there was certainly plenty of it about in the first few months of the year.

But also, 2050 is 25 years away - surely 2050 is in a future space age, not within actual reach. We can all remember 25 years in the past (well, if we’re old enough to) and often it’s forty years ago that feels like it was much closer.

But anyway back to the garden.

2050 is a garden that invites visitors to consider how gardening will change, and what plant species we can plant in our gardens today that will also thrive in the future. And my own increasing addiction to succulents isn’t lost on me either, here they’re used in a stunning and dramatic way to replace the ‘lost’ water.

By using derelict artefacts and features evoking a sense of nostalgia the garden reminds us that we don’t miss the water until the well runs dry, but also that we can create something beautiful as we adapt to the changing climate.

There’s definitely something to think about there, and how we adapt our planting now, whether we do that consciously, or sub-consciously as the garden centres change their offering looking towards the longer-term.

And this garden shows, it can still be beautiful and attractive. I’m not one for a water feature in the garden, but a fountain of succulents, now that would be something else wouldn’t it?

While at the show I was keen to eye up seating areas, especially those that might be on gravel. And this one delivered all of that. It’s something I’d been thinking about for our garden here - though I’m not sure if the gravel would work in reality. It’d be like walking across lego once you’d kicked back and kicked off your flip flops wouldn’t it?

I like the architectural detail around the sunken seating area, and spent quite a while thinking if a sunken area could work in our garden. Then I realised it would probably annoy me, and make me feel constrained, and that along with the prospect of finding much builder’s rubble consigned the idea for our garden to history!

But it doesn’t make me love this garden any less, what do you think?

* With thanks to Gardeners’ World for inviting me to Gardeners’ World Live, it was quite a show! I’ll be sharing more from my visit to this year’s show throughout the year - I hope you enjoy them as much as I did the show.

A useful velvet box pouch

I’ve recently bought myself a new ‘for workshops’ sewing machine (more on that another time) and as it’s primary use is ‘on the go’ I wanted to make sure it was easy to transport, so bought a sewing machine bag to carry it in. After the first time taking my new machine out, I realised that I needed a pouch to house the foot pedal and cables - I know, what were the odds of me needing another pouch?!

I wanted something relatively soft as this pouch will live in the ‘throat’ of the machine - the gap between the needle and the main part of the sewing machine on the right hand side. You’ll not be surprised to learn that I’ve kept various furnishing fabric samples over the years, and it was these I had in mind for this boxy pouch.

I’ve not made a boxy pouch before, and I didn’t have a pattern but I reckoned, how hard can it be?

I laid out the materials which I planned to use - the velvet ones are from upholstery samples when we were considering a velvet sofa in our previous home, and the patterned samples are from the large footstool we now have in our bedroom. It seems I know what colours I like, which is a good thing as they all are a similar tone and all work together.

When I had the fabrics sewn together - and had cursed my idea for using velvet without using the walking foot on my sewing machine - I checked again that the foot pedal would fit. It would probably be tight, but we were good.

I wanted a jazzy lining and so the navy flower burst material which came in a scrap pack I bought online was perfect. There was a fair bit of that too, which is always a bonus when it’s a fabric you like, but I did need to join it - but as that would be inside, that wasn’t an issue.

With the lining and outer materials attached and turned through, I edged the cross outline. After this I decided that it would probably work best to assemble the pouch with hand sewing. That would save any more arguments with the sewing machine, and the velvet and would also mean that I had as much space as possible to fit the pedal into the pouch, which after all is what it was all about. I didn’t mind if some of the lining showed on the outside either.

A toning brown popper completed the ad-hoc boxy pouch. I think it’s looking pretty dapper, as well as functional and practical, and gives me my own unique addition to my ‘to go’ sewing machine bag.

And it really wasn’t that hard at all.

My garden in July

Thankfully this month has been a lot kinder to my roses, they’ve continued to flower and just as the last (the fourth of the summer) arrived I was contemplating moving them back out from their shelter. Needless to say, that’s been postponed for a little bit - but it’s very different to the last few months where they’ve been a bit crispy and then bombarded with pests. They’re resilient plants aren’t they?

July was all about flowering succulents, many tiny apples and ripening the tomatoes from the two plants we had. There’s been more flowers blooming too, but it’s the succulents that have really held my attention this month. I’m not sure I’ve ever had one that’s flowered before, but it has been a complete joy ever since I spotted the first signs that something might be happening…

The flowers are dying off now, and I’m continuing to observe the plant to see what happens to it next - hopefully it won’t mean the end of my plant, but I suspect it won’t flower again next year though I’d be happy to be proven wrong. It has been a year of succulents, as I seem to have gained quite a few more at this year’s Gardener’s World Live - and more impressively have found pots for all of them.

Finding pots for my new plants has been a bit of a challenge, and I’d completely forgotten about the painted pot that the aeonium is in, even though it was right in front of me in the garage. Luckily though the small crab apple tree doesn’t require any kind of pot, though it is fully laden with apples this year, and would no doubt be grateful for some help supporting its weight.

I did need to give some of the branches a quick trim as they were growing over the fence and into, then up the wall. As the month has progressed and the sun has shone they’re turning a delicate shade of blush. It’s currently looking like there’ll be plenty to make crab apple jelly, and I’m hoping that I’ll be able to use some of the fully laden branches in an autumn wreath, but we’ll see.

I bought two tomato plants from the garden centre this year and they’ve happily been growing away. I like to grow varieties that you generally don’t see in the shops, and this year I’ve had this black fruit and a smaller but very sweet red tomato. After picking the first of the black varieties we learnt they weren’t quite ready to eat, but they soon ripened indoors. The tops of the black tomatoes turn a vibrant red when they’re ripe, and they taste much better that way too.

They have found a new spot in the garden too, a slightly less salubrious location close to the bins and the sick bay inhabited by the bay trees (which by the way have made a remarkable recovery and are now green again and growing new leaves). It’s a sunny spot though and I think the plants there - both the bay trees and the tomatoes - have benefitted from this.

I’ve picked all our tomatoes and brought them indoors to fully ripen. The remaining plants have been composted and the soil has been reused in the new and rather large olive pot - more on that in another post, and of course this also means I’ve two more pots at my disposal for any new plants…

The daisies that I thought might not make it flowered, which was a relief, though they’re back to not looking too healthy at the moment, so I’ll continue to keep my fingers crossed for these longer term.

My astrantias flowered for the first time - yay! - and the globe thistles which I bought earlier this year at the Newark Flower Show also flowered starting with the palest of blues. I’m hoping their colour will develop further, and they too, along with the roses, will move to somewhere where we can see and enjoy them!

In the borders by the garage the plants have continued to thrive, a little too much while we were away if I’m honest, and I’m still catching up with taming them. It’s a case of thinning and taking off some of the height as while the bushes would give us some privacy from the road, they also stop us seeing what’s going on!

It was great to catch the sun on these two, and the bonus of a web on the achillea too.

I’ve also added a santolini to my growing number of pots this year - we’ve seen this many times on holiday in both France and Italy, so it’s nice to have a tiny bit of that in our own garden. I brought home two peonies from my dad’s garden (he gave them to me, honest) and in my pot shortage I’ve needed to reuse some rose pots, but the peonies seem to be doing well which is a relief.

I’m joking about the pot shortage, but at times it’s been quite the thing. I know that the big way to solve this is to get on and get the garden design sorted, but the fear is real. I mean it’s great to have a blank canvas, and while I have quite a few plants to add to the new beds I suspect they won’t go as far as I think, there is the pressure (from myself mainly!) to get the layout right. It’s likely that we’ll get someone in to help transform my ideas into real plans, but that’s as tricky as getting started myself.

And in the meantime I’ll be keeping an eye out for the female stag beetle that wandered across the patio and onto the gravel for a bit of mountaineering to see if she, or anymore stag beetles make a return. So far this year there’s been 14,081 spotted in the UK, including ours. We used to see them in our last garden, usually earlier in the summer, but this is the first time we’ve seen one here though hopefully not the last.