Hello Gardeners

Guess who missed a complete season of gardening and landscaping news – me! Nobody rang to say that they missed my ‘deliberate’ mistake, is anyone out there reading my seasonal journal?

My vegetable patch is proving very productive, I have had plenty of early cauliflowers from February onwards as well as spring cabbage.  The carrots and onions are doing well now and I have plenty of tomatoes, although at the time of writing (8th August) they are still green!

This year I tried growing mange-tout with limited success – all the pods matured together, too many for us to eat fresh and our attempt at freezing them was not successful – it will be back to traditional peas next year.

I have plenty of potatoes.  This year, as well as seed-potatoes I planted some of the small potatoes I found at the bottom of the vegetable rack, they were planted in the poly-tunnel and have been very successful but I have yet to try the crop from the seed-potatoes.

In the spring, sales of top soil to customers preparing their own vegetable patches were higher than last year which was very gratifying.  However, sales of vegetable seeds were disappointingly low, but I look forward to an increase in sales next year now that more of my regular customers (and you) know that I stock a good selection of vegetable seeds.

Landscaping news – As you all know we are in the middle of a recession and this has affected us along with the rest of the country.  We have, in spite of that had some very interesting landscape jobs come our way.  Two that stand out particularly are:

1. A very large domestic landscaping job in which the paved areas were created using all old reclaimed materials.  To source these materials I spent two days in Northern England.  The pergola was built from English Oak which made it a very substantial unit.  The soft landscaping consisted of woodland, a natural garden and a wild flowering meadow garden to encourage wild life.  We will be returning in the autumn to plant thousand of bulbs.

1. A job in central London to build a raised vegetable plot and a lawn with shrub planting

We have more jobs in the pipe-line – a full design and build garden in East London with a ‘get –away from it all feel’ which will include a quaint summer house. The client wants no grass as they suffer from hay-fever.

Another client wants a wild garden which will include a natural-looking stream with a stone bridge and stepping stones to give access to the rest of the garden.  I am particularly looking forward to constructing this garden and sourcing the right materials for it - could it be another trip to the far North?

The maintenance teams have been kept busy this year – we are lucky in being given the task of maintaining some very nice gardens including some prestigious commercial grounds, but there is scope for us to take on more maintenance works and always welcome enquiries.

Staff report: - We have managed to retain all our experienced people during the last difficult twelve months; although for a period at the latter end of 2008 we were all on short time.  Fortunately we are back to normal now and even have a new member of staff Peter, of whom you will hear more later.  For a while we also had a temporary worker from Spain who proved to be a great asset.

The winter of 2008/9 proved to be one of the coldest for a number of years and we suffered quite a few plant losses, which might have proved a blessing in disguise as it gave us an opportunity to re-shape borders and try some new plants.

The harsh winter kept our salting trucks busy.  On one occasion we nearly ran out of salt!  The salting trucks were often waiting for deliveries from the depot. One 40 ton salt delivery arrived at 7.00pm when the pavements and car-parks were already icing up and half of it was used that night!  A cold winter indeed.  From the salters point of view, another winter like the last will be good, but as a gardener I hope it is isn’t.

I look forward to bringing you the next update in a few months.

Colin