Author Archives: sophieharriett

The Other Garden

This is the garden at the end of my block. It is on the corner, in full sun most of the day and next to a big plane tree. It’s very dry and the soil is poor.

The house is rented and belongs to someone who lives round the corner. I asked if I could take it over because it was full of weeds that get chopped twice a year – and then empty til the weeds grow again.

I have planted it with a lot of leftovers and things that have seeded in my garden, including lots of wild flowers that I’d had in pots or from Patrick.

The first year it looked really fab. The salad burnet was awesome, there were sunflowers, 4 o’clock flowers that Maxine gave me and lots of tomatoes given to me by another lady down the road. They were lots of bees and butterflies and I think more worms too.

Lots of people – even random strangers – said how much they liked it. It was really fun to do because:

It was always going to be better than it was
It was just an experiment
There was no pressure to make it fit together/ be a coherent “statement” garden, it was just a jumble
It’s not the kind of space I’ve ever gardened before

This year, it feels like it should be better than last year – and I think already it will be.

Pine Tree

We got this from the food shop at Christmas when it became clear we couldn’t go and see A&A. Edie wanted a tree in her room. It’s about a foot high and the only one left was covered in plastic snow, which we are slowly picking off by hand.

It smells lovely when you do this. It’s now in a pot in the garden and I want to see how it does. I am not entirely sure what it is but I think it’s pine….

Nemone grows mediterranean pines/ conifers on the roof garden as they are very drought resistant. I have never liked conifers but I might be moving on that….

4 o’clock Flowers

These come up as seeds in my garden. Sometimes I forget what they are – I once got very worried they were Japanese knotweed…. But they are these:

They made the Other Garden look good all late summer and Autumn. They come up late and last for months and they are crazy cheerful.

They only open their flowers in the late afternoon, hence the name. According to the internet they come from Peru. But these ones came via Turkey. The lady who lived next door when we moved in 2001 was Maltese (I think) and she went to Turkey on her holiday. She planted some in her back garden and she gave some seeds to Max who lives over the road. You can see a few of them in gardens round here where they have seeded over the years.

They crossed the fence into my garden. Max gave me some seedlings for the Other Garden, and Chris (who gave me some tomatoes for it) and is another older-style lady, took some of the seeds for her garden. And I harvested some seed and shared it.

I love that they all come from Gina’s Turkish holiday. Who knows how many other gardens round here will have 4 o’clock flowers one day?

Crab Apple

I really love my Crab Apple. I bought it in 2018 and it lived for a bit on the roof terrace and then fell over. It’s in a pot at the bottom of the garden. One day I might have to plant it out.

It has the most lovely blossom in the Spring that turn into apples that glow all the way through the winter. They are still on the tree when the new buds start growing.

Sometimes it gets wooly aphids. And I stand on a chair and brush them off with a toothbrush.

Jan 2021 – it probably needs pruning but I don’t know how. I reckon I don’t need to worry about it for a couple of years

Crab apple blossom — in blossom in Spring

Wildflowers in pots

Two years ago, I grew this Empathy Mini meadow mix in pots. And it looked great!

I’ve since planted on the soil/ leftovers in other bits of garden and it doesn’t look quite so nice, now I come to look back at it!

flowers from above — Flowers in a pot on the terrace (with my feet)

Roses

I don’t really get roses. I don’t feel I know how to deal with them properly. I have 4, all of which I’ve had for a long time. I’ve had more but they’ve died. I just don’t understand how to make them do what I want. I feel this most with a huge Paul’s Scarlet Creeper. Last year I cut it really hard and it was beautiful this summer. This year, it has climbed right to the top of the fence. So I have cut it again but I don’t know if the lower down bits will sprout leaves or not. There is a Sophie Rose in front of it that Marion gave me.

Here’s are some pics of it to make me feel better.

Waste

March

It looks like it’s working…. lots of flowers and no leaves. Next year, I just have to hold firm and leave the leaves there.

Salad Burnet

I am growing Salad Burnet! Who knew? I thought it was something else.

The first wildflowers seed mix had some and they were prolific(!) in the Other Garden and were the most lovely plant. I took the seeds and sowed them in a drawer and they came up (I think that’s them). Lessons

1 Label stuff

2 If you cut SB back, it comes again. The flowers are really beautiful.

3. Apparently you can use it in salad and it tastes of cucumber according to the Woodland Trust

4. I potted it on 27th December!. The drawer I planted them in was quite shallow and the roots were very widely spread. If you scooped straight down with a spoon, that still didn’t get them. Maybe this is true of a lot of wild plants that grow in places that aren’t very rich – they spread a lot.

QUESTION: how will they adapt to better soil? The soil in the Other Garden is very poor because it’s under a tree and no-one has fed it for decades. How will they do in my richer garden? Maybe plant some in pots and some in old crap soil

6, QUESTION: how good is the soil in MY garden? (and does it matter/ is it better if it’s not great?)

January 2021

Here they are in the greenhouse…

Corncockles

I’m growing these from seed too. They are “very rare” in the South East apparently or even extinct but they are very common in my back garden and in the Other Garden, and maybe anywhere else I can put them…

Is this vandalism? I don’t know

Cerinthe

I am growing this from seed – the first time I’ve grown something in the Autumn, not the Spring. I LOVE cerinthe and I bought 4 from Sarah Raven last year. That and sweet peas were the only flowers I got all summer. But they never thrive in my garden. They are spindly and disappear.

I took seed from these at the end of the summer and planted them in September in an old wooden drawer. They all came up! I potted these on. I love them because they look like plants are supposed to look like when you pot them on. All springing upright.

They are now a couple of leaves tall and in my new “greenhouse”. Nemone from Gardening Club says they will live through the winter if I keep them sheltered, maybe just tucked inside other plants. I wonder what will happen to them….

January 2021

Here they are in the “greenhouse”. Don’t they look lovely.

Pond swizzled

I love my pond.

It’s only a couple of feet long and a couple of feet deep at its deepest.

It has brought huge happiness into our lives. I am pretty sure it the only reasons I have a garden – because it distracts my children and instead of trashing the garden or playing football, they spend ages gazing into the pond.

We have frogs and toads and snails (2 kinds!) and hairy water lice and freshwater clams; we once found the skeleton of a water spider, the birds come and bath in it in the summer and the foxes poo round it in the night. But….

two frogs in a pond — the pond when we first dug it

It is hard work! Everyone says get a pond, it will be easy, nature will take over. It will thrive. But that’s not what happened in our pond.

It has taken more work than any other square foot of my garden. It has brought more concentrated joy than any other square foot but it is a lot of work.

It need lots of clearing and cleaning. I’ve dug it out three times and the last time we had to pay to have it done professionally (so hopefully no more).

It is very hard dealing with pond weed (normal garden plant knowledge doesn’t seem to apply. It needs the right amount of sun – not too much not too little and it can only have rain water in it, which is tricky when it gets really dry.

And all advice about having “small” ponds (once you’ve got one) turns out to be about ponds at least 10ft wide. And you can’t get ANYONE to realistically tell you when you can do serious maintenance as everyone says something different.

And though we have many many frogs, and sometimes spawn, we never have tadpoles. We have to get them in a jam jar from school – which isn’t right I know because of disease – but they seem to live very happily, wiggle into becoming frogs and the hop off around the garden (and then most of them get eaten by cats).

I would always have one – I would never get rid of it now and I’d even maybe like a bigger one – but it is hard work..

Navel Wort – the start!

I took some from my parents’ house in Cornwall. It grows up the stony walls and along the paths near their house – and up the back steps of garden, which are damp and shady. I love its shape and the places it reminds me of.

I’ve grown it in 2 different places in the garden. Both shady, one down by the pond. One is in a pot under the roof terrace. The leaves look much bigger than the ones in Cornwall, I think this is because it’s in rich soil – the stuff in Cornwall is growing up the walls. I’m hoping this summer it will seed into the wall behind it….

My wildflower book says it is only found in the SW of England and I wonder if one day people will be confused that it has taken hold in Hackney…

DECEMBER 2020

My Back Garden: the back story

I love my back garden. It’s where I learnt how to garden and I see it as a process that has led to where it is now. And it has turned into a philosophy – or at least a way of thinking (more on that later). But looking back at pics of what it used to look like and what it looks like now, I wonder if it does look better….

I know it’s full of life and variety so that’s a plus but I’m not sure not sure it looks as good. Also, it looks very lush but very CROWDED… I think a lot of things have outgrown the space. And there is a real question of balance about gardening for nature and it being gardening, which is not the same thing as leaving for nature. Jon Little, who’s garden I went to see in the summer does this in a fab way and I need to learn more.