Don’t mow the lawn!

Cutting the grass is a waste of time, but much more importantly it is destroying a food source for bees and butterflies. In the spring time, if you can resist tidying up the lawn and letting the dandelions flower you will be providing one of the richest food sources for honey bees at this time of year. Bees need all the help that they can get. Populations have crashed in Europe in recent years which have led to record low harvests of honey . We need all types of bees to pollinate food crops and wild flowers and to make us smile, so resist that urge to turn your lawn into green carpet and let the dandelions flower. If you are really brave and can withstand the tuts of tidy minded, ecologically ignorant neighbours, you can even let the dandelions seed and watch clown-faced gold finches feast on the seeds.

Why buy expensive imported “wild flower” seed mixes when all have to do is sit back and watch the grass grow for a few weeks and do more good completely for free?

Now that’s what I call real gardening!!I

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April Showers

T.S Elloit said April was the cruelest month, but for me it is the kindest, greenest, lushest and most beautiful of all the months in my garden.

It is raining, soft, soaking raining and as I watch the cherry blossoms on my neighbour’s tree are opening and the silver birch leaves are unfurling, turning the indistinct haze of buds into tiny sharp new leaves.

On my kitchen counter the green bean seeds are waiting for a lull in the downpour to be planted and my cat is miowing with indignation because she wants to go out but won’t tolerate her own muddy paws.

If it wasn’t raining I would be out in the vegetable garden, as muddy as the cat; but as I am sheltering in the kitchen I thought I would share how beautiful the garden is with you. April really is the start of the gardening year proper, so it seems a good time to start this blog and share my passion . Not every one would like this garden, it isn’t tidy, it isn’t themed, it isn’t colour coordinated, but it is full of life (even if the cats some times eat some of it!), and it is fascinating, so when I can, I will tell you about it.