My accommodation does not have outside space so I chose to garden on an allotment site close to where I live. Mostly I grow food, but I also give space to non edible garden plants that interest me, with the aim of creating a productive garden that is also a retreat and a positive place in which to work and relax.
An allotment for food and well being
I have been using the no-dig method of growing vegetables organically since 2018 and have found it to be an efficient and healthy way to grow, a method that encourages stability in the growing environment and thus reducing the work load associated with turning the soil and weeding.
The garden centres around the greenhouse in which heat loving crops are grown during the summer. The growing season is extended under cover and the greenhouse is used to achieve earlier and later crops than is possible growing outside in the weather. The perimeter is lined with fruit trees of apple, apricot, pear, plum, and cherry underplanted with black currant and gooseberry bushes. There are raised beds with permanent plantings of asparagus, strawberries, flowers and herbs, and an area of long narrow no-dig beds with wood chip pathways used for annual vegetable crops. There are several grape vines from which I make juice, and to one side a row of soft fruit, Loganberries and blackberries.
I make as much compost as I can, and set aside an area for making plant tonics from comfrey and rhubarb leaves in order to feed the soil and the plants.
Growing organic produce
Of the twelve fruit trees in the ground the apples account for five trees, the cherries for four trees, and then one each of plum, apricot and pear.
A sense of place
