A year to remember for home gardening
s we start a new calendar year it’s normal, no matter what your interests or lifestyle, to reflect and make comparison with those that have gone before.
An estimated 30 million UK gardening enthusiasts will be doing this right now.
This fellow, being one of them, generally considers the following: Was there a good return from home-grown crops, fruits, vegetables, ornamentals? Were there any outstanding successes or failures?
Do any garden visits or flower shows stand out in the memory?
Thankfully, there are some positive responses relating to the home garden.
Fruit crops, bushes, and trees excelled this year, with oodles to pick and in some cases a surplus to store.
Vegetables have continued production since spring, and we continue harvesting winter greens.
With limited access to ornamental plant plugs we resorted to sowing a collection of older annual seeds stored
The Alnwick Garden lights trail.
forgotten in a tin box and they saved the day.
2020 began with our main seed order to hand. It’s placed early in case top firms run out of popular varieties.
However, we also buy packets of seeds or young plants that catch the eye on regular garden centre visits, along with more bags of multi-purpose compost as young plants develop.
Everything was going swimmingly until mid-March and the unexpected lockdown!
Access to seeds, plants, compost, and sundries via mail order came to the rescue but with countless gardeners pursuing that route, it led to telephone and online logjams.
On August 12th Suttons seed firm announced that sales had grown by 2,500 per cent on some days.
80 per cent of these were vegetables. They sold 100 million lettuce seeds, 15 million beetroot and 25 million herbs.
Their conclusion being that the demand was from traditional gardeners ordering more and also newcomers to gardening cultivating vegetables for the first time. A recent Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) communication to members reflects that an estimated 3 million UK residents became new gardeners in 2020.
I’ll remember 2020 as the year this garden of ours illustrated as never before how important it is to our wellbeing.
Not only in providing the occasional fresh edibles to help sustain the body but also a brilliant environment in which to maintain a mental equilibrium!