Room to grow

The greenhouse at the bottom of the garden has finally come to the end of its days. The rickety old thing we inherited with the house served us well even as it slowly disintegrated and when the high winds in February left it wobbly the health and safety committee stepped in. Risks assessed and goodbyes said she was unceremoniously pulled down and burnt last weekend (although had the last laugh by revealing ridiculously large concrete foundations).

We are left with a decent space of 9m by 5m (a leylandii hedge has also been removed in case you are wondering how large the greenhouse was) and pondering what to do next. The original plan had always been to build a garden office down there with a flat living roof that we could look over from the terrace above. Some considerable time had in fact already gone into planning this over the years but in the event, influenced by the sounds of ‘Grow Your Own’ echoing across the country and February seed swap events, we quickly realised that what we wanted was a vegetable garden.

With the sowing season on the horizon the planning committee set to work assessing the site and designing a layout. Having designed vegetable gardens for clients but never had one myself it has been fun applying the ideas to our own garden. 9m x 5m seems quite a big space but once a small shed, a compost bin and some paths are in perhaps only half will be available for planting, so it’s definitely worth giving some thought to coming up with a plan.

The starting point was assessing the pros and cons of the site. It is south west facing so generally pretty sunny but one end is in shade cast by the house for part of the day so most of the growing will need to be at the other end (some fruit and veg will tolerate a little shade but on the whole the more sun the better). The bottom of the garden also borders onto a paddock so is fairly exposed and will definitely need some hedging to provide some shelter (most vegetables do not appreciate being buffeted by wind and will crop better if protected). We have decided on a beech hedge to tie in with the hedge further up the garden and to add an extra crop plan to incorporate into the hedge three fruit trees, a quince, a half standard plum and an espaliered pear.

Now it is time to plan the main event, and decide on shape, layout and style. A veg garden can be anything from a purely functional allotment style growing space to a highly ornamental potager. Ours will be pitched somewhere in between but one thing I do know is that raised beds will be involved. More on this project will be posted over the spring and summer, so watch this space, it will grow!