Out With The Old... Gardener Susie looks back at 2020
In the last of Susie’s pages for this year, she looks back over 2020 and starts planning ahead for next season’s garden
It’s been an extraordinary year! The spring was very warm and dry and, because of lockdown, people turned to gardening in huge numbers in order to grow their own veg in gardens, allotments, balconies and windowsills. Sales of seeds, particularly of vegetables, soared. In the UK, a staggering 100 million lettuces were sown along with 25 million herbs and 15 million beetroots! And there was a boom in sales of outdoor furniture, terracotta and glazed pots and plants.
With travel restricted we had to turn to online sales. Businesses quickly responded and in my area alone, two nurseries started delivering to gardeners who were desperate for plants and compost. It proved really valuable to have an allotment or any garden space for growing. We try out new seed each year so that I can write about and photograph the results in My Weekly.
My seed orders were delivered just in time so we were able to start sowing in the greenhouse in February.
I was asked by BBC Radio 4 to record a walk among wild daffodils in a woodland nature reserve. So it was that, among the news items on the first day of lockdown, listeners had a moment of birdsong and the peaceful sound of a stream. After that, my talks were cancelled and my diary was empty. Grateful for the good weather, I got on with gardening and writing.
It’s always lovely to see the photos you send in for the Reader’s Tips. You were also growing flowers and fruit (even harvesting lemons!) and coming up with ingenious ideas for recycling.
So please keep sending them in so we can all share our creativity and enthusiasm for gardening.
have been fabulous in pots. I like the way their petals roll inwards into narrow trumpets.
Also from Suttons I grew Nasturtium ‘Milkmaid’ in a