A plot among the chickens

May 8, 2025

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

At first glance this garden, like all good gardens, doesn’t reveal its secrets straight off, the name gives a clue as does the cockerel weather vane on the arched entrance, but when you look more closely you notice that the wire structure at the front of the garden is actually a chicken run. The chickens have space in the mini barn in the rear left hand corner and a run which enables them to explore an L shape section of the garden, with food and plants to entice them along.

The garden, designed by Ben Shutler, is based on his own allotment and garden and demonstrates how it is possible to keep chickens and grow beautiful flowers alongside edibles in a small space all the while keeping sustainability front of mind. Ben says that chickens are fantastic animals that not only provide eggs, but their waste can be used to create chicken manure compost to add back into the garden. He also loves to share his garden with wild birds too, as the sounds from them and the chickens provide great stress relief and help boost his mental health.

I love the planting in this garden and how it mixes flowers and edibles - that’s definitely something I want to do, but I’m afraid there won’t be any chickens in our garden, while I’m sure they’re great to have I suspect they are also more work than I would want to take on, and anyway, I’ve got the eggs from my local farmer just up the road which is a much better option for me!

* With thanks to Gardeners’ World for inviting me to Gardeners’ World Live, it was just as good as I expected! I’ll be sharing more from my visit to the show - I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

My favourite garden and awarded the Best Show Garden, the Eco Oasis Garden

April 29, 2025

As we wandered amongst the gardens I had an early clear favourite, and it was this garden designed by Dan Hartley. The corten steel drew me in, and the lush planting kept my eyes busy while looking at the planting at multiple heights and the small details like the insect hotel (bottom left in the first photo below), and the tin watering can (to the left of the seats in the second photo) and the bottle of rose temptingly placed on the table in the seating area!

But it was more than that, it was the feeling of calm as I admired the garden and it’s hard to explain. It wasn’t as intense a feeling as when we first descended into Hunte’s gardens in Barbados but it was along the same lines - and for any garden to give you ‘all the feels’ well, it has to be good doesn’t it?

This garden was inspired by the Gardener’s World Live theme of ‘The Good Life’ and aims to combine eco-friendly elements, aesthetic appeal and mindful living. The show notes say that ‘organic abundance is represented by vibrant, lush planting’ and that the garden invites people to experience the beauty of a balanced and environmentally conscious outdoor space. The garden is designed to be maintained with organic gardening principles and integrates simple water conservation and aims to enhance the natural ecosystem, which all in turn allows people to create their own ‘good life’.

And so I was pleased to see my favourite garden at the show awarded the Best Show Garden - of course, I had no say in it whatsoever, but it clearly appealed to many more people than just me.

Now wouldn’t it be nice to crack open that bottle of rose? Well, once it’s been on ice anyway!

The Kitchen Garden at THE PIG

April 13, 2025

I’m a sucker for a kitchen garden, as you may have realised from previous posts such as The Chef’s Table by Adam Frost, Challenging what kitchen gardens can be and the garden at River Cottage HQ to name a few, but there are many more posts here on my blog - just search for ‘kitchen garden’! And while I’d already seen and enjoyed Adam Frost’s garden at the show, I was in for another treat with this kitchen garden, complete with its very own large pig.

The garden was designed by Ollie Hutson and Fran Chilet-Olmos for The Pig Hotel, who admit that at THE PIGs they have an obsessive commitment to homegrown, local produce - which obviously isn’t a bad thing. I hadn’t realised until this garden that what they can’t grow or rear themselves, they source from local farmers and suppliers and it forms the basis of their 25 mile menu, and that is something to celebrate - and I bet it tastes as good as it looks.

One thing I’ve realised as I think more about how to add our own stamp on our garden here, is I’m a big fan of dense planting, and mixing edibles and flowers together - actually that’s two things, but it’s good to know that about myself. I think what’s holding me back in my own garden plans is how those tie in with a relatively low maintenance garden, or if I’m setting myself up for a challenge, or worse a fail - some more research and thinking is definitely required.

While I love the ordered structure of growing vegetables in straight lines like those I’ve (not literally) drooled over at Heligan and in the potager at Cheverny, I know that’s not really my growing style - I don’t have the patience, or the skill to replicate what I’ve seen there. This jumbled together approach is much more my style, but I’m not fooled into thinking it’s necessarily easier! But the results are fantastic, aren’t they?

Though I think I could probably manage to grow some basil in blocks like this - and I love the use of a crate for this too.

The chairs in the seating area caught my eye, I think partly because of their lived in look but also because they reminded me of my many years ago eBay purchase, which are still going. I was going to add strong to that sentence, but that might be a stretch of the phrase - they’re still in use though, in fact only this weekend they were put to good use as part of a ‘crochet blanketed fort’ by the youngest members of the family visiting for a barbecue. It’s amazing isn’t it, that three chairs and two crocheted picnic blankets can provide such fun - let alone when you throw in a tube of ‘bubbles’ to blow!

I told you the pig was adorable didn’t I, and I’m sure is more than happy with their surroundings!

So plenty of food for thought for my future garden in just a few photos, which have also evoked so many memories of other kitchen gardens, all of which will I’m sure help inform that part of my new garden - eventually!