Westrea Design Studio

Growing Our Own

30 Mar 2011 Leave a Comment

by Carolyn Maybray-Seymour in Growing Our Own

I have to say I am not a gardener.  Despite growing up with oodles of space as a child, my own greehouse (kept my rabbit in it mostly), and my great grandfather being a market gardener, I didn’t aspire to growing much.  In fact I did try when I was in my teenage years my father had an awful habit of walking round the garden and pulling up anything that looked like, to him, a weed!  We didn’t get carrots that year.  Then my parents rented out our large hidden vegetable garden to some of their friends in our village, I remember eating a lot of aubergine (egg plant) and marrow that year!

So, I was trying to get my 3 year old daughter and my two step-children interested in gardening and perhaps growing a few vegetables for themselves.  I read last year that it’s relatively easy to just grow your own potatoes in a Sainsbury shopping bag, the large ones re-usable ones that are pretty sturdy.  I have been recently reading about plants that don’t need full sunlight, which is what we don’t always get a lot of  in the UK, but also my garden is protected by huge leylandii trees in an attempt to reduce the amount of golf balls smashing my windows from the 18th fairway that my garden backsonto!

We are going to do some patio planting and I have found the following vegetables that can grow easily in shaded areas.

• Lettuce
• Spinach
• Parsley
• Garlic
• Mint
• Sweet Potatoes
• Carrots
• Black berries
• Raspberries
• Strawberries
• Yams
• Radishes
• Pak Choy
• Brussel Sprouts
• Beetroot

Watch this space/blog as my step-son wants me to add photos of his progress!

If you want to grown your own then join in the great RHS Challenge this year