Veg Plotting

I spotted this jolly scene on a trip out with my SUP friends recently. We were walking through the village of Holt and stopped to admire the sunglasses and umbrella on the statue. October was very warm this year, but umbrellas not sunglasses were needed on our walk that day. Just as we were about to leave the cottage owner appeared, who smiled and laughed at our appreciation of her handiwork. "Ah yes" she said, "I really must dig out her coat now that autumn's here". It turns out the statue is well known locally. Often when she gives directions to where she lives, there's a cry of recognition - "Ohhhh, you're the lady with the girl in the garden!"

A last minute change to my weekend's arrangements meant instead I was able to meet up with my SUP pals D and S yesterday afternoon in Bath. A cold had kept me firmly indoors all week and it was great at last to take a tentative step outside for some fresh air. My usual parking spots in Henrietta Gardens were all taken, so instead I found myself in Sydney Road opposite the Bath Spa Hotel. From there it's a pleasant walk down the hill through Sydney Gardens (which first opened in 1795), where I found the above beds still managing to look cheerful in the pouring rain. At the bottom of Sydney Gardens stands our afternoon's rendezvous, the impressive Holburne Museum , recently reopened after an extensive (and controversial) refurbishment. The museum first opened its doors around 100 years ago, though before that it was an elegant hotel. It now houses the Holburne collection , a vast repository of art, fine furniture, porcelain and silverware collected in the late 18th ...

... Kilver Court A couple of weekends ago, my SUP friend S and I visited Kilver Court : this was in the same trip as last week's ABC Wednesday Jaunt which led us past the lovely prairie-style planting in Radstock. This garden's been on my must-see list for a couple of reasons: it was opened to the public last year after an extensive restoration and also because it features a rather prominent viaduct - a relic from when the Somerset & Dorset railway ran through the town of Shepton Mallet. This is a listed building and so is set to stay. I was intrigued how the garden's design would utilise this 'feature', especially as Chippenham has a similar - and equally historic - viaduct slap bang in the centre of town. I was looking for inspiration and ideas for a possible public planting transformation. The gardens were initially developed by the local factory owner for his workers in the 1800s. In the 1960s, the Showerings family (of Babycham fame: it was b...

After a year of trying, I finally managed to get the SUP team together last week for a visit to Lytes Cary Manor . As you can see we had the perfect day for it: the only (minor) downside was the amount of wasps, but then it does seem to be a particularly good year for them everywhere . If anything the gardens are even better than last year: there's lots more pots and many, many sultry Dahlias, including D . 'Arabian Night', which I'm also enjoying in my garden at the moment . S and D have fallen in love with the place: have a look here and here for my reports on my previous visits - with lots of photos - and I think you'll fall in love with it too. Whilst we're on the subject of garden visits, I'm delighted my latest guest post is on this very topic over at The Guardian Gardening blog today. I'm exploring the issue of how garden visiting is becoming the victim of its own success and what can be done about it. I'd welcome anything you can add...

It's ages since I put a slideshow together and sorting through the dozens of pictures I took on my recent visit to Hanham Court , I feel this is the best medium to convey a sense of the place. Lavish planting requires a lavish presentation! Hover over the image if you'd like to look at anything for a bit longer - I suspect you'll want to with this wonderful garden. My SUP friend S arranged a trip there a couple of weekends ago, having first visited in May and raved about how lovely it was. She's not wrong. This is the first year the garden's opened extensively to the public, though it has been open under the National Gardens Scheme in previous years. Architecturally, there's something from almost every century since the Norman conquest and at one time the house was part of Keynsham Abbey. This influence can be seen in a number of the found objects used in the garden. In 1993, the celebrated garden designers Julian and Isabel Bannerman decided to make Hanham...

Ever since I took Tea in the Garden with my SUP friends last year, I've been waiting to have a try at making elderflower cordial. It's deliciously airy, refreshing taste is just like drinking a glass of summer. This weekend's sunshine and plentiful hedgerow flowers meant it was the perfect time to start. However, I was lacking a key ingredient: some citric acid. A search around town yielded nothing. Brewing shops are quite some distance from here and an internet order might mean a delay until the flowers are past their best. Fortunately I found just what I needed in my trusty Jekka's Complete Herb Book : a slightly different recipe using ingredients I had already. It makes lashings of elderflower cordial at a fraction of shop prices. Ingredients 4.5 litres water 700g sugar Juice and thinly peeled rind of 1 lemon 30ml cider or wine vinegar 12 large elderflower heads Method Shake any bugs off the flowers Bring the water to the boil and pour into a st...

All wasn't magical at first on Friday as heavy weather over the Cotswolds saw us ( SUP and I) battling through gusty winds, snow, hail and a dramatic sight of Mammatus clouds - this link will take you to some pictures of what we saw and this one explains what they are - as we headed out of the storm towards Malvern, bathed in sunshine at last. I worried if similar weather had wreaked havoc with Lola , the main focus of Deb's show garden, but as you can see she was calm and serene on our arrival. Later on, gusty winds managed to lift some metal fencing bodily and dump it on nearby cars just a few yards away, but her lovely feathers remained unruffled. Well done Deb, your silver was very well deserved. I met up with Helen ( Patient Gardener ) and Anna from Green Tapestry at the Design For Living Theatre where James was holding court with Terry Walton , who was much taller than I imagined from the radio. I asked a question about leek moth on our allotments, which elicited ...

My head's an explosion of colour at the moment, following Thurday evening's trip to Toppings (a lovely independent bookshop) in Bath with Threadspider and my SUP buddies to see Kaffe Fassett . Regular readers may recall we met him earlier in the year at Bath's Blue and White exhibition - that was so enjoyable, we were determined not to let a second opportunity pass us by in less than a year. The evening's objective was the launch of his new book, Country Garden Quilts . I'd been intrigued when I heard of this as the quilts are not only all on a theme that's close to my heart, but they were also photographed at Great Dixter , a garden on my must-see list. I'd wondered whether the strong colours and luxuriant foliage of Great Dixter's borders might clash with the vibrancy of Kaffe Fassett's work. On the whole I needn't have worried. Prior to the book signing (and after a brief introduction from another of my needlepoint heroines, Candace Baho...

We had a SUP outing yesterday. Not a tapestry in sight, but amongst the pigs arranged on display in Bath's Royal Victoria Park we found designs by Kaffe Fassett, Brandon Mably and Candace Bahouth . We went to the Farewell to the Pigs event - a chance to see all 105 pigs which have been placed around Bath and its environs all summer. Judging by the numbers in attendance yesterday, this fantastic public art event can be confirmed as a roaring success.

In Threadspider's garden - July 2008 ... Love-in-a-mist When I offered saved seeds to my Open Garden donors on Sunday , I didn't think Love-in-a-Mist (aka Nigella damascena ) would be that popular. After all, they're always being given away on the front of gardening magazines, so everyone must have some right? It looks like I'm wrong as this is the most requested seed packet thus far. I can see why: an evocative name with lovely jewel-like flowers above all that floaty foliage. The seedheads are pretty too, each capsule containing plenty of seed, which can be used in Indian cooking. It's an easy annual, once sown always filling in some gap in the garden. Don't worry if this is your requested packet, I should have enough to go round. This afternoon my SUP friends are coming round to help me make the seed packets ready for sending your selections. I'm really looking forward to it as we haven't all got together since our jolly trip to Weymouth in August. ...

Leaving seeds to dry - Geranium 'Splish Splash' Yesterday saw me whizzing round the garden picking up the last of the seedheads I want to save before the forecast winds and heavy rain lashed them into damp submission today. The less time it takes them to dry, the sooner I can send them out. These are the seeds I'm offering to my Open Garden donors. I'll be contacting everyone involved to ask what you'd like, but you may like to peruse the list below prior to my getting in touch. You'll see that some of the seeds have been kindly donated by Threadspider and Patient Gardener and I've tried to cater for both veggie and floral preferences. On Wednesday, my SUP friends will be joining me to help make the seed packets, so quite a few people will have been involved in putting it all together :) There's still time to grab yourself a packet of seeds simply by visiting my Open Garden and leaving a small donation if you haven't done so already. You Grow Girl...

...a small, sparkly fridge magnet called Claude. Yesterday saw me taking a little time out for a trip down to the seaside at Weymouth with my SUP friends to celebrate D 's retirement. We went on the train, so there was plenty of time to gossip on the way down and have a quick snooze on the way back after a thoroughly good day out. I have a number of fridge magnets to commemorate holidays and nice events. My rules are to find something tastefully tacky for less than a £1. Claude came in well under that at all of 50p. Since we moved here in 1999, I haven't been able to display my collection on the fridge as it's covered in a wooden door, so I've resorted to displaying them on a radiator instead. Here's a small selection - how many of these places do you recognise? How many have you been to as well? We had a thoroughly good time - fish and chips eaten from the paper whilst perched on a wall by the harbour; ice cream from a delightful cafe at Nothe Fort park (with view...

I just had to buy The Grauniad today after Bath Crafting Cranny's (thanks Jess!) tip-off about the free rebel knitter's guide give away. This turned out to be 12 knitting patterns by Marisa Turmaine , who hit the headlines recently following her freebie Dr Who monster knitting patterns on the internet were seen as a bad thing by the BBC. I rather like the idea that something as innocuous as knitting seems to have taken a more edgy, subversive turn. In the guide I learnt that there are knitting guerillas from a group called Knitta , who adorn public artefacts such as signs and statues around the world with bits of knitting. This seems to be a more extreme form of the Innocent drinks' The Big Knit , where over 400,000 mini hats were sent in by knitters from all around the country last year to adorn Innocent drinks bottles, thus raising over £200,000 for Age Concern. I'm hoping that my SUP friends will be joining me in this year's campaign in the Autumn. I'd h...

'Tea in the Garden' is the favourite phrase of one of my fellow SUP members. We had plenty of it (plus 2 different kinds of cake and lashings of elderflower cordial) at regular intervals last Sunday when we got together for a textile painting session. We'd come back inspired from our trip to Stroudwater Textile Festival a month ago by looking at fabulous artwork like this: It's by Pauline Burbridge and reminds me of the reedbeds where I do my research out in Mallorca And this: The others weren't as keen as I was on this piece by Maggie Baxter. I thought it had an African/Asian batik feel. They were reminded of murdered body outlines at crime scenes! So we each made our own little textile painting on calico. My companions made very tasteful pieces using a tracing of a William Morris tile and a flower stencil respectively. My piece comes more from the primary school approach to artwork. However, like the work of the artists above, I did combine several techniques (t...

Coming back from Salisbury on late Monday afternoon after a lovely day with my SUP friend Sally, I spotted the following car number plate whilst driving through Devizes : TRY 6X Do you think the car came from here - driven by the sales manager perhaps?

I was lucky enough to be the first winner in The Garden Monkey's (GM) Big Bash Books a couple of weeks ago and bagged this one as my prize of choice. It caused quite a stir on its publication at the back end of last year and has been on my 'To Read List' ever since. It sets out to redefine the RHS ' best practice and its author Matthew Wilson, has been at the forefront of shaping this during his time as Harlow Carr's Curator. He looks at how we can garden in harmony with nature whilst reducing our impact on the environment. You may think he's preaching to the converted, but believe me there's plenty of gardeners out there who don't have this enlightened way of thinking if Chippenham's anything to go by. Sustainable it ain't. The book starts with a look at climate and the soil, a refreshing starting point - these vital elements are often overlooked; then the themes of sustainability, wildlife gardening, and gardening in a drier climate are tack...

Threadspider and I were reduced to weak-kneed giggling schoolgirls yesterday when we visited the Blue & White show in Bath for the second time. We both admire Kaffe Fasset - me for his tapestry (needlepoint if you're across the pond) and Judith for his quilts. Both are much in evidence at this exhibition. Yesterday we both got to meet the great man as he was there for a book signing. For me, there was a wonderful bonus as Candace Bahouth (another tapestry inspiration) was also in attendance. Her mosaics at the exhibition were a revelation to me and my fellow SUP regulars - Sally was there too yesterday. There was a very unBritish melee in the Gallery as we awaited the arrival of the great and the good. Judith and Sally neatly averted certain disaster by preventing a Kaffe Fasset original screen crashing down on a table of his pottery, thus saving many thousands of pounds of modern art! Soon afterwards Kaffe appeared and treated us to an eloquent description of his work...

I grabbed this shot whilst on my way to meet up with SUP to see the Blue & White exhibition in Bath today. Both the wording and the guy on top of the waste bin amused me greatly. He was reading a book at the same time, so he was completely oblivious to the product! The exhibition was fabulous and inspirational. It was like greeting old friends as a number of the exhibits were the originals of pieces seen in my craft books. I hope to return in a couple of weeks time as Kaffe Fassett is doing a book signing.

I had a very cosy Sunday with SUP earlier on in the week - drinking mulled wine, eating crumpets and generally setting the world to rights. We did briefly touch on all things needling, including my completion of the pictured Nerys from my day at Jolly Red . This project took a wee bit longer to complete owing to my woolly headedness in leaving the chart in Somerset at the end of the workshop. Happily chart and owner were reunited in time for me to complete Nerys for showing off last Sunday. SUP gets back into field work mode next month as we'll be visiting the Blue and White exhibition at the Victoria Art Gallery in Bath. This features the work of Kaffe Fassett, Candace Bahouth and Carol Waller and starts today, hence my saving this post until now.

Here's some of the results from today's SUP Christmas decoration session. We managed to create an amazing number of decorations, bearing in mind the vast amount of supping, chatting and eating we also managed to pack into the afternoon! These are now wending their way to Bath to help brighten up the scene over there.