Growing garlic 2018

I apologise in advance for my mangled attempt of referencing in this post. I'm trying out using some referencing software and I think I've entered some info in the wrong way. Anyway I've planted out some more garlic this year and the bulbs I sourced are fantastic. I thought I'd write up a little post on garlic planting.

Common name: Garlic
Genus: Allium
Specific epithet: sativum

Description:  Garlic is a bulbous herb 60cm in height, with four to twelve leaves attached to an underground stem. Flowers are contained in an inflorescence called a spike and are greenish-white. Amazingly seeds are not usually produced in the wild but have been produced in the lab (www.kew.org, 2018).


Origin and brief history: Central Asia is considered to be the original area where garlic grew and it's said by some to have been bought to China (which is where Westerners discovered it) by the Mongolians from the Asian steppes (Salvestrin, 1984). Other historians claim that garlic did in fact originate from China itself (Petrovska and Cekovska, 2010). Ancient Egyptians used it in their cooking and fed it to their slaves and ancient Egyptian crypts contain the oldest visible inscriptions of garlic (Petrovska and Cekovska, 2010). It is mentioned in England before 1958 by Peter Martyr in his writings about the new world where he says it was used in Mexico (Salvestrin, 1984).

Growing your own garlic;

Locally grown organic garlic is superior in flavour to the commonly imported Chinese garlic you find in supermarkets however it is also significantly more expensive. As luck would have it though, garlic is dead easy to grow in Melbourne and most parts of Victoria so why not give it a go yourself?

How to source bulbs 

Basically you can use any garlic bulbs you would find at a farmers market or you can buy bulbs online through various suppliers. You want to plant out a variety that has a flavour you appreciate and source bulbs that are large as I'm guessing they probably have more energy reserves that can be utilised to produce a larger end product. This year I bought Italian purple garlic from Hopkins River Herbs which I found through farmhouse direct https://www.farmhousedirect.com.au/hopkinsriverherbs. The garlic I received tastes fantastic and was large in size so it's just what I wanted.

Soil

Well drained clay loam with a PH between 6.5 and 7 is said to be the best soil in Victoria from growing garlic (Towers, 1984). However I know lots of people that grow it in various soils. So long as it's not in extreme clay or sand and the PH is reasonable I think it will be ok.

Timing

People have all sorts of crazy ideas in regard to timing. I've heard lots of different stories such as 'plant out on mothers day and harvest on fathers day'. Another tip lots of people have given me personally is to plant out in autumn before the weather starts to cool down. The idea behind this I'm told is that the change in weather somehow assists germination and the early growth stages. Whether this is true I don't know but all the crops I've planted have turned out well using this timing.

Irrigation

My basic irrigation strategy for garlic is simply to give it some water when there hasn't been much rain. Pretty simple but it seems to work fine.

Planting method

After you've sourced your bulbs you want to break them into cloves but you don't want to plant out the cloves that in the centre of the bulb. Smaller cloves have less vigour and are better eaten than planted out. Place them in the soil tip up and base down and try to cover them with around 5cm of soil (although this is a rough measurement sometimes I've done it with less or a little more). I then water them in out of habit and that's the whole process.

Harvesting

I will cover harvesting in a later post in detail.

 That's what 1kg of Italian purple garlic from Hopkins River Herbs looks like

Over exposed pic of the separation in progress

You want to avoid those smaller cloves in the centre. They wont grow into decent bulbs

All ready to go

Make sure you plant them pointy end up

References

Petrovska, B. B. and Cekovska, S. (2010) ‘Extracts from the history and medical properties of garlic.’, Pharmacognosy reviews. Wolters Kluwer -- Medknow Publications, 4(7), pp. 106–10. doi: 10.4103/0973-7847.65321.

Salvestrin, J. (1984) ‘Review of garlic overseas and in Australia’, in Sutherland, J. (ed.) Growing Garlic The Unforgiving Crop. 1st edn. Melbourne: Department of Agriculture NSW, p. 1.

Towers, B. (1984) ‘Growing garlic in southern Victoria’, in Growing Garlic The Unforgiving Crop. Department of Agriculture NSW, p. 83.

www.kew.org (2018) Allium sativum L. | Plants of the World Online | Kew Science, Kewscience. Available at: http://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:528796-1 (Accessed: 8 May 2018).

 

How I've improved the soil in my backyard veggie beds

First of all I realize it has been a while between posts (I'm not dead in case you were wondering)

When I opened up my blog a few days ago I was shocked to see the last post was in 2016! Basically I got a bit blogged out and forgot / ignored it. I'm pretty sure that I've lost all the people who used to follow my blog and that is my fault but hopefully I can get things rolling again and put down some content regularly from here on. If you're an old follower who is reading this because of some kind of alert then please come back again. Anyway I'm alive and well plus I'm going to be starting my own garden design / maintenance business very soon now which is personally very exciting (see www.aggregata.com.au for a partially finished website).

Improving the soil in my backyard veggie patch

History of the site

We purchased our land in Macedon Victoria around 10 years ago and after a while I noticed a few strange things about the soil. The block we live on was one of the most barren in the street. Unlike the other blocks which had lots of trees and plants ours was rather bare with large patches of mixed species (weedy) lawn. Through digging in the backyard I found very little top soil compared to the front which had at least 15cm and more in some places. I'm wondering whether the top soil in the back yard was scalped by a bob cat at some stage.

Soil analysis

I learnt how to complete a basic soil analysis through one of my subjects at university and I discovered the following info about the soil in the backyard;

• It had a PH level of 5 which is slightly acidic and possibly detrimental to plant growth for some species
• Using the soil texture triangle I was surprised to find the soil was in fact classified as sandy clay loam (56.52% sand, 30.43% clay and 13.04% silt)

Ah Manutec my old friend. You are so much more accurate and reliable than the $5 Bunnings PH probe.

Is it 5.5 or 5? Hard to tell from the pic but it looked more like 5.

Soil improvement last year

I dug the beds last year in preparation for spring planting. I sprayed off the turf with organic herbicide and dug in some compost. Unfortunately I didn't attempt to rectify the PH. Plant growth was not great last season.

Bed #1 with last spring / summers pathetic left overs.

Bed #2 which I cleared out a few weeks back.

My raised bed. You can see the difference. So much growth. On a side note organic snail bait doesn't work. I caught the little buggers munching on my bok choy it a few nights ago. I'll have to try other methods as I don't really want to go back to using Baysol snail pellets.

Overhaul

After pulling the old veggies out I dug in roughly half a m2 of five ways soil mix then limed the

Although last years crop wasn't very good I was pleased to see the soil had improved structure wise. It felt nice and loose when digging it over and it had a nice amount of moisture. The soil definitely was less hard packed. I applied lime at the rate of 100g per m2 to try and change the PH back to a more neutral level. I'll do another PH test soon to see if it worked. I then watered the lime in and mulched over with old straw from my chicken coop that I removed a few weeks back. The plan for the beds are to plant out 1kg of garlic that is arriving in the mail soon.

There's nothing like the feeling (and smell) of driving a ute with one m2 of 5 ways mix on the back.

Look at that pristine bed all ready to go and not a weed in site. It won't stay that way for long :)

I always water down mulch. Don't know if it really helps it settle and become wind resistant but that's the idea.

Calendula officinalis aka pot marigold a greet self seeder in my home garden

Calendula officinalis the plant that keeps on giving

Calendula or pot marigold is a very popular and common annual flower in many ornamental gardens throughout the world. In fact it is so commonplace that I found inconclusive results as to which region this plant originates. Some sources say Europe and others India. It can grow to about 80cm tall in extreme cases and can be used in mass plantings as a complete ground cover. Calendula has many medicinal, companion planting, culinary and even cosmetic uses which I will write about in another blog entry.

Self seeding 

I planted Calendula in one of my flower beds at home a couple of years ago and it is still going strong to this day. Being an annual plant Calendula's tactic for reproductions is to produce as many seeds as it can which fall to the ground after the flowers are done. The flowers are at their best in spring and summer however in Melbourne they can pretty much have some sort of flower on display all year round. The seeds have an interesting shape and remind me of little dried and curled up millipedes. The first year they sprouted in my garden from self sown seeds I originally thought they could be forget me not seedlings (forget me nots are a bit of a weed in my area depending on whether you like them  or not). Luckily I suspected they could be Calendula seedlings and let them develop into full plants.

Escape artist

Calendula is such a successful self seeder that it can escape if you let it. It is not fussy about soil conditions and I have seen it growing in my Macedon garden in between pavers where the soil would be quite poor. If you want it to self seed as I do then leaving a few plants to die off naturally will ensure they are perpetual garden residents. If you don't want them around any more it is important to dead head or pull out the plants once they develop seed heads (see below the picture below).

Calendula flowers in my Macedon garden during early summer.

A close up of a Calendula seed head loaded with seed. If you don't want any more pot marigolds then you need to make sure these little seed bombs don't hit the ground.

Add some blue to your late winter / early spring garden with Spanish bluebells

Hyacinthoides hispanica (Spanish bluebells)

Around this time of the year a nearby town called Kyneton hosts a daffodil festival. The cooler climate that the area provides really suits daffodils and as such lots of people have them growing in their gardens. That being the case another bulbous plant commonly known as the bluebell has to take a back seat to the Narcissus plants.  It flowers at the same time as daffodils and jonquils and planted in mass is quite spectacular.

Hyacinthoides hispanica or Spanish bluebells are native to an area known as the Iberian Peninsula which as expected contains the Spanish coastline and other nearby regions. They are dead easy to grow and as with many other bulbs they are extremely hardy specimens. I have seen them growing in extremely dry locations such as under an archway where almost no rain would fall. In England they have hybridized with Hycacinthoides non-scripta and the resulting plant is quite invasive. In Melbourne this isn't the case and they are a great addition to your other bulbous plants.

After they finish up for the year let them die back and try to resist cutting back the browning foliage. If you leave the foliage to die back the bulbs will benefit and draw energy from the leaves. This energy will assist in the next years bloom. If left in place they will naturally propagate themselves and you should get more and more each year. If you get too many simply dig up some of the unwanted bulbs.

Crassula ovata aka Money Tree or Jade Tree. One of the easiest pot plants to grow.

Crassula ovata

Without a doubt Crassula ovata is one of the hardiest and neglect tolerant plants I have grown to date. It has a few different common names 'Money Tree' being the most common. The problem with common names is the confusion that arises when different plants are given the same common name and Crassula ovata is one such plant. I have found that people often give all Crassula's the moniker 'Money Tree' especially the smaller leafed Crassula (I'm unsure of the botanical name). The great thing about this plant is that it is almost a 'pot and forget' plant. Being a succulent it requires very little water in the summer and even less in the winter. It is also almost fail proof in terms of its strike rate when propagating it from cuttings which can be either stem or leaf cuttings. It flowers in winter and can be planted outside in the ground or potted up and placed either inside or outside. The only trouble I have had with my potted Crassula is frost damage which occurred when I moved the plant from its original position where it was protected by my verandah. Crassula ovata is originally native to South Africa but is now found many countries. It is often used as a Bonsai plant. Crassula ovata is a great plant to gift somebody who desires a low maintenance plant. 

This Crassula was located in a car park in Brunswick Victoria. This attests to its hardiness as it would have to endure all sorts of damage in that location.

A close up of a tiny white / pink flower cluster.

As with many other succulents the appeal is mostly in the foliage. 

This is what heavy frost will do to a Crassula. This poor fellow is from my home and it had to endure not only heavy frost but also snow this winter. If I had kept it under the cover of the verandah it would have been fine. I'm predicting it will bounce back once the weather warms up.

Visit to Stephen Ryan's amazing garden 'Tugurium' in Macedon, Victoria, Australia

Open garden 'Tugurium' in Macedon

Last Easter weekend I had the pleasure of manning the gate at Stephen Ryan's home garden in Macedon. Stephen is well known in horticulture circles throughout Australia and is particularly well known amongst plant and garden buffs in his home town. He has amazing plant knowledge and is the president of the Macedon horticultural society.

I first met Stephen almost 4 years ago when I visited his nursery on Mt Macedon. I spoke to him about wanting a career in horticulture and was lucky as he recommended me for a job and thus my life as a gardener began in proper. He has a passion for collecting plants and runs a rare plants nursery. He has GPCAA (plant trust) collections of the genus cornus, acanthus and sambucus. He was the previous host of the popular Australian television show 'Gardening Australia' and is also an all round nice guy.

His garden is called 'Tugurium' which is latin for hovel or basic dwelling. My fellow gate minder on the open day told me Stephen humorously named it so after hearing somebody rudely remark that his property (when it was first purchased and essentially a vacant block of land with a small house) looked like a hovel. The property in its original state had virtually no topsoil. All the topsoil there now is the result of organic matter being dug in. Spent potting mix from Stephen's nursery is also regularly added to the topsoil and garden beds. The garden is basically a garden which has an amazing amount of different plants in it with a narrow paths that meanders throughout. There is a veggie patch, chook house and pond area. The garden is so full of plants that walking along the narrow path creates the sense of several walled garden areas as you cannot see the garden in its entirety only what is in your present space. The front of the garden is a bit more open and has several established trees and big manna gum that was planted to provide a home and food for the local Koalas.

There is lots to see in this garden I would definitely recommend a visit next open day. The sheer number and variety of plants that are jammed in this property is staggering and the garden path walk is an experience to remember.

Link to Stephen's website below
http://stephenryan.com.au/

Medlar tree with fruit in the front of the garden

Abutilon plant. An oldie but a goody.

One of many garden beds in the front of the garden. A good example of how many plants are incorporated into the garden. Not sure of all of their names but I can spot Rhus trees and Miscanthus grasses.

This timber walkway forms part of the garden path that winds through the garden.

More of the path with the popular Dicksonia antartica (common name soft tree fern). Tree ferns thrive up in Macedon where the weather is a bit cooler than Melbourne.

I think Stephen's plant collecting is getting out of control. This sun dial was engulfed by so many plants that I'm pretty sure that no direct sun would ever strike its face. I could be wrong it was an overcast day.

Wow what a great looking pond area. I think the downfall of many ponds that people place in their gardens is that they look too manufactured whereas this one has a nice natural appearance.

Chicken coop and run. This one is nicknamed 'Cluckingham palace'.

A view of a portion of the garden path. You can see here how the garden creates the effect of walking into several walled gardens due to the sheer number of plants and clever placement of gates and archways. 

Another section of the garden towards the rear of the property. Amaranth plants and a small section of the veggie garden. 

French lavender is a great choice for an ornamental or hedging plant

French lavender (Lavandula dentata)

Lavender is in my opinion one of the most classic ornamental plants. Almost everyone you ask knows what lavender looks like and also knows its perfume. There are several types of lavender, the most well known of which are English lavender (Lavandula angustifolia) and French lavender (Lavandula dentata). Both these species are commonplace in many Australian gardens but my favourite is French lavender.

Background information on French lavender

French lavender is native to the Mediterranean, Atlantic islands and Arabian peninsula. It's used for ornamental purposes and also for its essential oils. French lavender likes to grow in dry conditions with full sun. Apparently it also likes alkaline soil but it seems to grow fine in the slightly acidic soils that I have at home. You may also read that it doesn't tolerate frosts but it is fine in my garden in Macedon where we get significantly heavier and more frequent frosts compared to Melbourne. This leads me to believe the frosts people are referring to when stating that frost can be a problem for French lavender are the really biting European frosts. The species name dentata means toothed and refers to French lavender's toothed shaped leaflets. I love the perfume of lavender and can personally attest to it being a relaxing and calming effect. Whenever I spend the day pruning lavender hedges I always feel really relaxed when I get home later that day. Some people make small lavender packages they place in their pillows to help them sleep.

Why do I prefer French over English lavender?

I personally prefer the appearance of French lavender as it is more green than its greyer English counterpart. I also like the fluffy foliage as opposed to the more needle like foliage on English lavender. French lavender also has a much longer length of bloom so you will see flowers on it for a good portion of the year. Because French lavender is less woody than English I suppose it is also easier to strike from cuttings also both plants respond well to this form of propagation. One of the real benefits of French over English lavender is its ability to grow back from a really hard pruning.  French lavender hedges can be pruned back almost all the way to the wood but English lavender doesn't react well to really hard pruning and if you go all the way back to the wood you can potentially lose the plant.

Personal preference

The choice of an ornamental plant can be compared to the choice of a painting on a wall. So long as the growing conditions are suitable the choice is one of personal preference. English lavender fans may read this and completely disagree with me and that is fine as many of the reasons I have listed in the above paragraph are purely aesthetic. Many people prefer the look of English lavender because to them it the more traditional looking species. Each to their own.

Close up of the magnificent lavender flower. These are on display for a good portion of the year in my home garden.

My small French lavender bush in my Macedon garden during early autumn. Notice the massive amount of flowers it has in bloom. This plant holds some sentimental value for me as it is the first plant I propagated and grew into a full sized specimen. 

The pros and cons of self seeding plants

Self seeding plants

This summer I've noticed several self seeding plants popping up in the garden at home and at work.

Self seeding weeds

In some cases self seeding plants are seen as a nuisance. The definition of a weed is 'a plant out of place'. This means anything that self seeds that you think of as being a nuisance can be classified as a weed. The trick to managing self seeding weeds it to remove them before they grow seed thereby eliminating their method of reproduction (easier said than done). Examples of notorious self seeding weeds are dandelions, plantains, clover and many others.

Desirable self seeding plants

If a self seeding plant that has miraculously grown all by itself is desirable then there is nothing more magical than watching a plant you love materializing all own its own. One of the best things about a desirable self seeder (apart from the fact that you have had to do nothing to grow it) is that they are sometimes superior to plants you have sown yourself.

Examples of desirable self seeding plants

One example of this is an echinacea plant that sowed itself at my work garden. The funny thing is that we were trying to grow this particular form of echinacea but it only grew very small. We couldn't keep the poor little thing alive and forgot all about it. The next season a massive Echinacea plant sprouted up less than one metre away from the original one on the opposite side of a path that separates the two locations. The self sown plant is huge (almost twice the size of the original). Another example is a massive sunflower that self seeded also at work. It has to be the biggest sunflower that I've ever seen. The plant grew without any help whatsoever and the single flower head was huge (see the picture below). The other very popular example of self seeding is that of self seeding edible plants (parsley, chives, chard, lettuce and many others).

Annual flowers are by nature great self seeders. Annuals (lasting only one year) obviously need to be good self seeders to keep propagating themselves. Annuals I have at home that have done this include amaranthus, pansies, sunflowers and hollyhocks. Hopefully next year I can add poppies and calendula to that list.

This is the seed head from the self seeded sunflower. Unfortunately it was in bloom when I was on leave from work so I couldn't get a picture of it in its full glory. I'll save all those seeds and plant them at home next spring.

Amaranthus that grew itself in my home garden. Note all the annuals in the background that I've purposely left to run to seed. They should add to next years warm season annual display.

Below is the humble pansy. These little troopers keep reproducing themselves year after year. Heaps of them sprouted in my annual bed of my Macedon home last spring.

Rudbeckias are great perennial plants for late summer colour.

Rudbeckia

Early this year I had to do an assignment on plant selection for a proposed garden design. As part of that work I need to visit a nursery and photograph the plant tags for the specimens I chose for the design. The local nursery I visited shut down some months ago now but I have a plant growing and thriving in my home garden that was kindly given to me as a gift by the nursery owner.

The plant is a Rudbeckia and as it was propagated by the nurseryman himself it didn't come with a plant tag so I'm not exactly sure of the species. I'm 90% sure mine is Rudbeckia fulgida because it fits the description of having a slight serration in the leaf margin and also leaf hairs. Rudbeckias are amazing looking plants which come into bloom late summer after all my regular annual flowers are tailing off to seed. My one has large yellow daisy like flowers but they also come in other colours. The great thing about the one I have is that with very little care it has quickly grown into a massive plant (and I have read that they are so vigorous that they can become invasive in rich soils). When I first planted it the Rudbeckia was very small indeed. It came in a tube and had a single flower stem with one flower. Within  one season it is now roughly a metre tall with bunches of flowers. See the link below for a picture of this now massive plant when I first put in into the soil.

http://aggregata.blogspot.com.au/2013/05/clearing-slate-for-my-macedon-garden.html

Dividing Rudbeckias

As they are clumping perennial plants Rudbeckias can be propagated by division. I haven't done this myself but I have read that it is as easy as digging up the plant and splitting it with a sharp spade in spring then replanting the clumps in a desired location. I've propagated other clumping plants by division before and I have to say that it has to be one of the most successful propagation methods. Apparently you should divide Rudbeckias every three years.

The massive flower heads on my Rudbeckia.

Spring has sprung in my Macedon garden 2013

Things have been really busy on the garden front this spring (hence the lack of October blog entries). My private weekend gardening jobs have really picked up due to the change of seasons and I've been cutting down jungle thick front / backyards almost every weekend. My first weekend with no jobs was one which I planned to do my own lawns and other garden jobs but I was feeling burnt out garden wise and the garden has suffered as a result. The lawn is getting quite long with plantain weeds sending up their flower spikes everywhere. The weeds in the garden beds have started to grow steadily but luckily they are not as bad as they could be due to some really early spring weeding that I completed.

That said, I have kept on top of a few other garden goals at home other than the mowing and weeding. So far I have made sure that I plant some seeds every weekend and it is starting to pay off with lots of veggies and flowers shooting up. The veggies done from seed have been bush beans, climbing beans (blue lake), loose leaf lettuce and Galangal (well technically not a seed but a planting nonetheless). All have sprouted bar the Galangal and I am really hoping that it does grow because I have never grown or tasted it. On the flower side of things I have lots of sunflowers popping up from seed I collected from last years flowers that I planted in Parkville (click on this link to see them when in flower http://aggregata.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/lillies-echinacea-and-sunflowers.html). I've also been nurturing the herb garden at home and finally have a good selection of herbs at hand for cooking. Another really pleasing sight in my garden are flowers that have self seeded from last years annuals including black Pansies and Hollyhocks! I really hope the Hollyhocks take off and tower above the rest of the flowers come summer. My Garlic crop looks almost ready so I should be harvesting in a few weeks or so. Unfortunately some animal nipped the tops off a  quarter of my Garlic crop (looking at the animal tracks I think it may have been a Wombat). Whatever it was it came back 3 times at night but since then has not returned.

All in all this spring has seen many successes in terms of growing new plants and a few inevitable failures along the way but I guess that is part of the learning experience. I think this weekend maintenance on my home garden is a must or things will really start getting crazy. Time to start pushing the old mower :)

A mass of cottage flower goodness

This picture of the Kniphofia flowers was taken early spring (maybe the first week). I'm really glad this plant flowered as it was a bit of a gamble as I've never seen any growing in the colder Macedon climate. The good thing is that I had these flowers showing for much longer than the Kniphofias in Melbourne. The down side is that the foliage of the plant looked a little stressed due to winter frost. 

Another early spring picture of my Tulips with Aquilegias in the background. These Tulips were planted last year and came back with a vengeance. 

The Garlic is looking really strong this year. I have been eating the small bulbs and planting the bigger ones for the last 3 years in the hope of producing a better crop.

Polyanthus flowers are still going strong.

I planted lots of Violas this year and this one is my favorite. I love the colouring it reminds me of fire.

Heaps of yellow and also orange Calendula flowers are starting to burst.

One of the big success stories are my Snow Peas. They are really heavy croppers. One of my daughters rushes out to pick them every morning and there are still lots left over when I get home from work. Here is a link to when they started out http://aggregata.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/snow-pea-climbing-frame-construction.html. There is also Broccoli, Broad Beans and Bush Beans in there.

This unassuming little fellow is one of many pansies that self seeded from last years flowers. 

Not sure what this beautiful plant with the pink flowers is called. It must be something incredibly common as it grew from a 'cottage garden mix' of seeds. Unfortunately I lost the packet so I can't identify it. I'm sure one of my fellow gardeners will know its name....... Several months later I was told this goes by the common name of 'Corncockle'.

Below are Aquilegias that have been going strong for 2 years now. I got them when I was working at Stephen Ryan's nursery 'Dicksonia Rare Plants' on Mount Macedon. They were growing in the path like a weed and a fellow employee suggested I take them home and plant them.

Icelandic Poppies that I grew from seed are still popping open. They really are an awesome flower and keep opening up one after the other for a long time.

My better half loves planting Australian natives in the front yard and the Grevilleas are on show right now. 

This is the very first rose from the David Austin rose bush that I won in a competition earlier in the year. It is not much to look at now as it is just unfurling but in a few days it should be in all its glory. I never used to like roses but since after winning this and another in a competition I have become quite obsessed by them.

My 'herb boat' the SS Herbsman is fully loaded with Lettuce, Coriander, Continental Parsley, Curly Parsley, Oregano, Chives, Rocket and for some strange reason Brocolli. The frame in the background is for my climbing beans. My god look at the length of the lawn. Its as though the boat is sailing on a sea of grass.

There it is, my favorite pocket of the garden in its entirety. Rambling, out of control and absolutely packed with plants both edible and ornamental. Just the way I like it.