Kitchen Garden Forum

"By no means all of my friends are gardeners and I never say to people 'would you like to look at the garden?' because any lover of gardens, even if he sees only a lawn and a solitary herbaceous border, will ask to see it himself."
Down the garden Path, Beverley Nichols

I still get the same excitement looking round a new garden as i ever have.
It's a real joy seeing peoples ideas put into practice.

We love looking round peoples gardens and this year we got the NGS garden book for the North West. We started rather later in the season than we wanted to but did managed to look at quite a few. Some were absolutely magnificent, one that sticks in my mind was a really large garden near Bentham where there was something interesting round every corner.

We are looking forward to next year to start at the beginning of the season, I even list them on our calendar to make sure I dont miss one.

Whenever I go to somebody's house for the first time, the first thing I want to see is their garden, rather than how clean their lavatory is because somehow I think that every garden projects a little of the personality of the person who has created it, or who tends it.

I'm not sure what people would make of my garden, especially when it's growing full pelt in summer, because beetroot are growing mixed up with geraniums, and Morning Glory can often be found interwining with my climbing beans. It's all rather ecclectic but some of my most contented moments are spent out there pottering in it.

Catherine : if you didn't watch "Alan Titchmarsh's Garden Secrets" for the 18C you can still catch it on iPlayer - it has quite a long section from the Osbourne's garden at Clearbeck that I think is the one you enjoyed (with the pyramid?).
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00w15w0

Did anybody see the Carol Klein programme on seed preservation, soil and compost last night?

I found it very interesting and far more enlightening than some of the stuff we've seen on Gardeners World recently. I can't help thinking once again what a pity it was that she wasn't selected as the Lead Presenter when Monty Don left the programme. (Ageist or anti-feminist BBC again ???). I think explaining some of the basics of gardening like this is really important, especially for novice gardeners who don't realise that the quality of your soil can make such a difference between success and failure.

It certainly looked very informative Primrose, I think I may need to watch it again on the iplayer as I wasn't giving it my full attention (I think I was on here!) but the soil samples in water were revealing.