NOTES from. the garden / / structure

Gardening has largely been a plants and flowers thing for me but with a huge school greenhouse to install and a new yard to design, I'm entering a new world of hard landscaping. Can I pull it off?

I’ve finally got my home gardening mojo back after the upheaval of divorce and moving house. The school garden kept me going throughout and we sent our first batch of radishes to the kitchen last week to add to the lunchtime salad bar. The children’s excitement was infectious, as it was when I cleared the little kitchen border in my new backyard and came in with hundreds of potatoes – a leftover crop from that which the previous owner had grown before, along with a harvest of what looks like Chinese radishes or daikons (love these pickled) and the beginnings of a coriander grove.

Within the border I planted the perennials I managed to lift or divide from my old plot, legitimately taking only seedlings or parts of clumps from the main garden and whole plants from a slice of land bestowed to us by my mum-in-law who owns the property next door. The soil is fertile, if peppered with unknown edibles but it’s easy to weed things out and I’m relieved that my only job really is this. There are ample gaps within my planting scheme to add further shrubs or sowings and I like the feeling of potential. There is a definitely a crying out for some grasses and lush, blowsy green and I’m excited to explore this genre further.

I also managed to replenish my herb garden and pots this month, tipping out old compost (saved to make new compost when I get a suitable container for my heap), setting aside unwanted weeds as refuse, and saving bulbs of narcissus, grape hyacinth, and tulip. Some are just dying down at the top of pots and I marvel at vegetative propagation in action as tiny corms and bulb clone themselves under the earth ready for an even more floriferous display next year. Some are buried so deep I wonder when I planted them.

I find crocks of old pots at the bottom of each vessel, some I remember putting there when I moved in to my old house over 15 years ago. I have one pot left with a rosemary I planted them, soon after I arrived. It is still blooming, hanging on in there with Mediterranean resilience against the droughts that have come and gone. I took most of the pots when we split, having tended them for so long, each year a slightly different display: tulips ‘Belle Epoque’, agapanthus, spring bulbs, and hardy perennials.

I manage to replenish my pots with new peat-free compost and arrange yesterday’s haul of herbs within and I feel immense relief. I established my last herb garden in large wooden barrels while writing and testing the recipes for my book The Heritage Herbal, sourcing heritage specimens from renowned suppliers such as Jekka’s Herb Farm. I managed to bring some herbs with but spotted a lost cloud of sweet cicely and a majestic angelica when I popped my head over the fence last week. I felt momentarily sad and dare I say it possessive but herbs are by their nature meant to be shared and I will fill the gaps, for do we ever own our plants anyway?

Jobs for June are next on the agenda. The sun is finally shining and I’m itching to make a list. First up has to be the installation of a water butt and irrigation system to both conserve water and ensure that my plants survive the summer when I am away and in case of another drought. I won some money for the school to do the same and so pledge to install both systems simultaneously.

The school greenhouse also arrives next week finally and from then I can properly plan what to grow here, there, and successionally. I’m sure, with a little organisation and a lot of propagation, we can both enjoy and make an enterprise out of the plants we grow and nurture. I am starting to see a plan beyond the here and now, and also pledge to create some seating – an outdoor sofa for me, benches for the kids at school – so we can enjoy the fruits of our labour in repose.

Above this I envisage vertical planting of some kind, and so trellis or upward supports will be required. The school garden also needs a sheltered area so I can finally teach in all weathers. Am a qualified to direct or install these kind of structures? Can I do it on my own? On paper and with a new independent determination yes and so, drill and saw in hand, I go forth into June with a new resolve. To create a sustainable framework for all that I grow, in the garden and beyond. The just flowering sweet peas, with their delicate but insistent tendrils spur me on.