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Gardening


I enjoyed this video, which shows what one man has done with the gardening space available to him.  It demonstrates how even small and seemingly uninteresting spaces can be transformed into something lovely.  The idea reminds me of the late Geoff Hamilton's BBC series, Paradise Gardens, in which he promoted a similar idea.  The series is a pleasure to watch for its own sake; it has a dreamy, tranquil quality as well as being grounded in practicality.

A quick Google search for "gardening in small spaces" offered me 82,800,000 results.  Clearly there're plenty of ideas out there, such as using tubs, drain pipes, old tires, vertical gardens, home-made greenhouses, wooden palette boards and even a derelict car to house both ornamental and food plants.

Our garden is a fairly decent size.  I keep talking about putting in a pond...and maybe a duck or two could then be added to the menagerie which hasn't been so small in a long time.  Having now got only one dog, one cat and two hens feels strange.

Anyway, I have a plan!  I'm thinking ahead to next year, and aim to have a go at growing more food.  Instead of fussing about digging specific beds for vegetables, I plan to simply plant them where there's space.  We can easily lose some lawn - in fact we'd like to as we both hate mowing, which takes forever and you have to really keep an eye out for frogs and toads.  They're another reason why I want a pond.  We used to grow more fruit, and I want to re-establish that too.

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