The Organic Garden

Chapter one My space: planning your garden

My granddad detested disorganisation of any sort. He kept all his files in immaculate order and planned everything exceedingly well. If my granddad was writing this book he would expect you to prepare detailed plans of your garden on paper to which you could refer later. And you would need to work out exactly how much spare time you had, and whether or not it was feasible to do the things you wanted to. I am ashamed to say that I have not inherited his sense of order or preparation, I can’t draw and I’m not too good at keeping records. What I can do is appreciate how the seasons change the garden, work out what type of soil I’ve got and what plants I can grow, shape the garden to suit my needs and see that the wildlife get their fair share. None of this is difficult. It just takes time, knowledge and a sense of calm understanding. I tend to keep all the information about my garden in my head and move it around from time to time to come up with the next stage of my slightly baggy long-term development plan. Your impression of a garden changes over time and you learn things that you couldn’t possibly have imagined when you first encountered the space.

Take a gap year

Unless you’ve just bought a new-build house, you’ll come into a garden as a small link in a great chain of people who have come before and who will enter after. New-build gardens come without any of the emotional and physical clutter of other people’s plants, sheds, ornaments and rubbish to worry about. If you’re starting work on an old garden, it’s rarely advisable to tear the whole lot down and start again. It takes up more energy, materials, time and money and is not environmentally, financially and emotionally sustainable. Decide what you can live with and work with what you’ve got.

Whether your garden is new or old, it takes a good year to get to know it well enough to really start pulling a plan together. Plants are either sun-loving, shade-tolerant or semi-shade tolerant and the shade cast in your garden will vary from month to month over the whole year (see page 68). You’ll need to learn how other weather conditions such as rain, wind and frost affect the garden (see pages 72–85), because they will all affect plant growth too. If you’re planning to put in fencing, hedging or any structural elements, you’ll need to site them carefully to make the most of these conditions (see page 38). You’ll also need to know what kind of soil you have – clay, sandy, boggy, dry, stony, rich, poor, acid or alkaline – and what sort of plants will grow there (bog-loving, drought-tolerant, acid- or alkaline-loving, and so on). For the sake of clarity I’ve put all this important information in Chapter three.

Plant editing

After about two years of being in my current garden I’ve really started to appreciate all the wildflowers that come up. I haven’t had to do anything to encourage them – just leave them be. In fact, in large parts of my garden I’ve developed a policy of editing what’s there naturally rather than buying and planting seeds. This means digging up those weeds that will become invasive (see pages 190–207) and leaving those wildflowers I know I want. Foxgloves (Digitalis), cambrian poppies (Meconopsis cambrica) and red campion (Silene dioica) are all mainstays in my garden and they’re all fantastic for pollinating insects. They are also resistant to attack from slugs and snails. Editing is a good way to learn about the differences between weeds and wildflowers if you’re just starting to garden.

But editing has obvious limitations. You can’t edit yourself a vegetable patch. Or an orchard. Or a perennial flower border full of your favourite plants. If you want to grow the plants you prefer, rather than those the soil throws up, you have to write your own story – not edit nature’s. This means working out what sort of planting schemes you want, what shape beds to make and how much room to give to each different element within the garden. You’ll also have to decide how to enclose your boundaries and where to put your paths. If your pencil skills are like mine – only fit for French caves – don’t feel you have to draw everything. Keep it in your head. For once it may be better in than out.

Hopefully as you read this book, you’ll get an idea of what sort of plants you might want to put in your garden. If you’re like my mum you’ve probably already overstocked it in your imagination to Kew Garden proportions. Remember to leave room for all the other things you need: paths, seating areas, hot tubs. The last one is optional, obviously, but unless you’re in possession of a Harry Potter broomstick you’ll need the first two. A balance has to be struck between plants and infrastructure. And if you’re starting with a clean sheet you need to plan both at the same time.

Pulling shapes: landscaping and other materials

Most of the hard landscaping materials in my garden were chosen by the previous owner. Luckily he landscaped the garden sensitively, creating terraces using walls made of slate, largely reclaimed from the part of the house he took down to make room for an extension. It must have been a huge job – one that I’m very glad I didn’t have to do. I can live with my hard landscaping, and I don’t intend to change it or add to it. If you’re starting from scratch or want a change, however, you’ll need some eco-options for paths, walls, fences, seating areas and any other random garden features like trellis, arbours, and so on. Perhaps, more than anything else in your garden, it is important to get your landscaping features right. If chosen badly they can make a big impact on your garden and the environment.

Soft landscaping vs. hard landscaping

It is possible to garden entirely with so-called soft landscapes. Soft landscapes are created using living materials and include lawns and grass paths, hedges made using trees, shrubs and other plants, as well as arbours and other living structures made out of trees such as willow. If it is managed sensitively, soft landscaping is mostly more environmentally benign than hard landscaping. Hedges need to be trimmed responsibly and regularly – preferably using power-free tools or power tools that use renewable energy – and can produce a number of useful by-products, such as fruit, poles for staking peas and beans, decorative material, and so on. Lawns and grass paths are lovely to walk on and fairly low maintenance, but be careful how you cut them. A study funded by the Swedish Environment Protection Agency found that using a four-horsepower lawn mower for an hour caused the same amount of pollution as driving a car 150 kilometres. In preference use an electric mower or, even better, a non-powered mower.

Hard landscaping is made from quarried materials or cut from timber and includes decking, walls, fencing and hard paths. Common materials include stone, cut timber, concrete, brick, plastic, metal and glass. Wood is the most environmentally benign material if it is cut from responsibly managed woodland (see information on FSC approval, pages 26–27) or, even better, if it is reclaimed waste wood. Avoid MDF (medium-density fibreboard). It is made using wood and a bonding agent called urea-formaldehyde, a dangerous material described by some as the ‘asbestos of the 90s’. In preference use untreated wood.

Quarried stone usually comes in its raw unprocessed form. Quarrying is hugely destructive of local environments so look for reclaimed materials if you can. If you can’t, use materials that are local and traditional to your area. Unprocessed materials are generally better for the environment because processing usually involves the use of more energy. A prime example is cement, a major component of concrete. Cement has to be burned at 1500°C (worldwide the cement industry creates 10 per cent of all CO2 emissions).

The range of reprocessed materials available to the gardener has increased over the past few years: look out for paving materials made out of reclaimed brick, chipped slate, recycled glass and reclaimed aggregates. A lot of energy is needed to produce glass, and likewise plastic, but both materials are used extensively by the gardener to capture heat and speed up the growth rates of plants. Old windows can be recycled into cloches and although polytunnel plastic wears out after a few years it can then be turned into mini cloches or laid on the soil to heat it up in early spring. Plastic is used extensively to make water butts, watering cans, compost bins, raised beds and other common garden objects. Look for products that are 100 per cent recycled.

Fencing, hedges and walls

Possibly the first thing you need to do in a garden, if it hasn’t been done already, is to fence, wall or hedge it off. A barrier between you and the rest of the world helps to keep out four-legged pests like rabbits, deer and sheep (although will rarely deter foxes and cats); gives shelter and privacy to a garden; and helps to screen out ugly noise and views. Fences and hedges also offer protection from wind, but a solid fence that stops the wind dead is less stable than one that slows the wind speed down. Fencing can cast shade on a garden so you need to strike a balance and plan your materials carefully.

Fencing options

If you’re buying a standard cut-wood fence, the sort of thing found in most garden centres, look for the FSC symbol, as before. A company called Forest Garden supply a huge range of DIY shops and garden centres with a massive range of wood products for the garden, including fencing, gates, sheds, storage boxes, trellis, and so on, using wood cut from FSC-approved UK forests owned by the Forestry Commission. Hurdles are a nice alternative to wire fencing and the more conventional garden fencing in most DIY stores and garden centres. They are made from untreated coppiced wood and can be bought or made at home using the same skills as for rustic furniture-making. The best website I found on the subject was www.allotmentforestry.com. Not only does this have a whole set of wonderful free fact sheets explaining how to make gates, fences, tables, arches, bird tables, hurdles, plant supports and a laptop table, there is also a directory of craftspeople working with coppiced material in England. For more information on fencing, see page 79.

Hedges

NEVER PLANT LEYLAND CYPRESS! Sorry, had to get that out of my system. Leyland cypress (Cupressus leylandii) is a fast-growing conifer that needs to be trimmed to maintain a good hedge, and rarely is. You usually see hedges brown, dying and ugly because the owner panics as they grow and grow and grow…and cuts the top off. Or else you see them more than 6 metres high, from which height they shade everything in sight. See www.hedgeline.org for some truly awful hedges gone wrong and try to avoid doing the same in your garden. I’ve picked out some good hedging trees on page 81: check them out before buying.

Hedging takes a few years to establish and will not keep out pests until it is thick with growth (and even then rabbits may still get through). In the interim use a wire fence as a temporary shield. The height and type of wire fence required varies from pest to pest (see page 216), as does the lengths of the stakes used to support it. For the

Ethical choice: natural finishes

Gone are the days when everyone covered their fences with creosote or white paint as a matter of course. The average can of paint contains fungicides, heavy metals such as cadmium, and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Titanium dioxide, used in most shades but particularly in ‘brilliant white’, is a possible carcinogen and can cause respiratory problems and skin irritation. Paints also give off VOCs (volatile organic compounds) when drying. VOCs are known to induce eye, nose and throat irritation, headaches and dizziness; some are suspected or known to cause cancer in humans. There is now a range of environmentally sound alternatives for waxing, polishing, painting, decorating and otherwise preserving internal and external surfaces. CAT sells some of them, as does www.greenshop.co.uk and www.greenbuildingstore.co.uk. Brands include Auro, Green Paints, Stuart Furby’s Lime Earth Paints, Ty Mawyr Lime, Eco-strip, Holkham Linseed Paints, Osmo Uk, Earthborn, La Tienda, Treatex and Clearwell Caves.

stakes use local untreated chestnut, which lasts longer in the soil. Bash the stakes in at 2-metre intervals with a sledgehammer and draw the wire as tight as you can before fixing it in place using a hammer and 10-mm fencing staples. For more information on hedges, see pages 80–82.

Making a wall

Walls tend to be made out of earthen materials (i.e. those that come out of the ground), although you do get some very nice walls that mix earthen materials with wood – a technique known as cordwood masonry. If you want a stone wall, research which stone is local to your area and buy accordingly for a wall that fits in with your local environment. Alternatively, use reclaimed brick (www.salvo.co.uk or check with local builders’ merchants), or make your own – see left. Making your own bricks gives you a great sense of pride. Organics is all about gaining confidence by doing it yourself. Avoid using concrete blocks. Many show gardens have experimented with walls made with recycled materials, including old bottles, tin cans, rubble, and so on. These are either built using a binding material such as mortar, or more simply stacked in rows using gabions. Gabions are steel mesh boxes primarily used in the road building and construction industries. Now you can get garden-sized gabions from www.stones3.co.uk. Fill the mesh up with natural stone, reclaimed building rubble or any material that will hold weight.

Cob is used extensively by eco-builders. It is made by mixing subsoil with straw and water, and then pounding or treading it down to form free-standing walls (see page 57). In a similar vein, rammed earth, mud bricks and stabilised earth blocks are all popular natural building materials for walls.

Seating areas and paths

Grass is the most obvious soft landscaping choice for a seating area. If you’ve got a large lawn and want to cut down on the mowing, think of leaving some of it to grow longer into meadow and keep only a small patch of regularly cut lawn for seating. Meadow lawns need only be cut two or three times a year, saving energy and creating a habitat for wildlife (see page 165). You can get different mixes of grass seed nowadays, catering for different uses and sites: www.organiccatalog.com is a good place to start looking. Wiggly Wigglers, www.wigglywigglers.co.uk, have also launched their own cut wildflower turf which you can lay like ordinary turf.

For something a little shorter than a meadow, plant an informal lawn with flowering bulbs. Plant spring bulbs and your lawn will be free of flowers and ready to walk on by the time it comes to summer socialising. Remember that lawns get very scuffed up if you have to do heavy work in the garden. My own lawn is more or less dead but I plan to reseed it with a shade-tolerant seed mix when work is complete.

Woodchip can be used as a non-living soft landscape material for seating areas and paths. It can be laid directly onto the soil, but to ensure seating areas and paths are kept weed free, it’s best to use a permeable geo-textile membrane underneath. The membrane is laid in a single layer and the woodchip poured on top until it covers all the membrane to a depth of at least 5cm. Most garden centres sell woodchip – usually recycled from forest waste. Geo-textile membrane tends to be made from plastic: for a more natural alternative try Hemcore Biomat. This is made in Essex from hemp grown in the UK without the use of pesticides and herbicides.

www.traceytimber.co.uk, sell woodchip made from reused pallets. Biomat is available from www.amenity.co.uk and www.ewburrownursery.co.uk. Try www.rooster.uk.com, www.drgrowgood. co.uk, www.specialistaggregates.co.uk – all sell shells, a by-product of the fishing industry. Recycled glass chippings are available from these sites: www.derbyshireaggregates.com, www.decogem.com and www.rbgc.co.uk. Also try www.stevemassam.co.uk for crushed brick from factory rejects, and www.salvo.co.uk and www.reuze.co.uk.

Woodchip is a low-impact material and will need replacing as it rots. Hard landscaping materials such as timber decking and concrete paving slabs last longer. Both of these can be destructive to the environment: source FSC-approved timber decking or reclaimed materials from salvage yards. Try Ashwell’s Recycled Timber Products, and Wideserve and BPI Recycled Products for recycled decking. A wide range of long-lasting ‘chipped’ hard landscaping materials – shells, glass, crushed brick – are available. Again these should be laid on top of a permeable membrane to prevent weed growth.

Other garden essentials

The word organic doesn’t just refer to plants, it means all the materials you use to make garden essentials such as sheds and benches. Here are some ideas to get you started.