Abigail Willis’s blog about gardening, urban and otherwise
I was delighted to be invited to appear on Jennifer Jewell’s thought-provoking and wide-ranging ‘Cultivating Place’ podcast recently, which airs on North State Public Radio in California. It was an interesting experience – a bit like a gardener’s psychotherapy session, as Jennifer drilled down (albeit very gently) into my gardening journey, and the story behind…
I’ve been really pleased with how the garden’s looked this summer but one week into July, it feels like the heatwave is beginning to take its toll in this patch of Somerset . Or is this just the usual midsummer slump, with the promise of more good things to come? Time for a midterm report.…
It’s a mistake to say that nothing of interest in the gardening world happens in January. By the end of the month the days are getting noticeably longer, the green shoots spring bulbs are already emerging and, in this neck of the woods at least, gardeners have Potato Day to look forward to. Last…
Popped down to the allotment today, for the first time in ages, this year even. As the picture below shows, it was a bleak scene. Last night’s snow/sleet had faded but the whole place gave the impression of hunkering down beneath a lowering January sky. The swathes of black weed surpressing plastic that so many…
Returning home from Wendy Shillam’s inspiring ‘Leaf Lore’ workshop (see previous post), I lost no time in sowing some leaf seeds in my equivalent of the Rooftop Vegplot – a far from picturesque container beneath my kitchen window. I’m hoping this will prove to be both slug proof and cat proof! The seeds were an…
Salad days are here again and with this in mind my visit to Wendy Shillam’s city potager for a workshop on leaf growing could not have been better timed. After a disappointing lettuce season last year, I’ve been yearning for delicious homegrown salads and itching to crack open the seed packets and so when Wendy…
One of the highlights of last weekend’s Shepton Snowdrop Festival was a guided walk through Edford Wood to see snowdrops growing in the wild. The wood, which is owned by the Somerset Wildlife Trust, is a designated ancient woodland, meaning that it has existed continuously since 1600. It mainly seemed to be made up…
February can be a pretty bleak month in the garden so a new festival celebrating one of the month’s few horticultural reasons to be cheerful is good news. The Shepton Mallet Snowdrop Festival (http://www.sheptonsnowdropfestival.org.uk), which took place for the first time this weekend (17-19 February), is the brainchild of the town’s horticultural society (http://www.sheptonhortsoc.org.uk). The…
Snowdrops
Too much choice can be a difficult thing to handle, at least when it comes to choosing potatoes. This year my disappointment at not being able to attend our local potato day (http://www.potato-days.net), was tempered when I recalled how traumatic I had found last year’s event (the first I had ever attended). A potato day…