Gardening is My World!

I like to see myself as a modern female version of the Irish guy who used to do the garden design show on Channel 4 - not the Ground Force no bra BBC attempt at making gardening look sexy. The mere thought of dirt under my nails and grass in my hair gets me excited about the summer, and so does the lovely prospect of having home grown vegetables straight out of my London garden, and who knows maybe even one day a water feature or gazebo of my very own.

Gardening really isn’t something restricted to the suburbs or the countryside - it is the new ultra modern super organic way of living with a credit crunch in full swing. Why wouldn’t people want to grow their own, get outside and have something to focus the depressing state of the world on where you can escape to a leafy, recession-free part of your life?

When I began to think about my garden and what to do with it, I instantly called my parents for their green-fingered advice. With a quick lesson so I can tell my perennials from my bedding plants and germination from pollination, I obviously thought there was nothing to this gardening lark and headed to my local garden centre. Of course I was wrong. Gardening is tougher than I thought - Mother Nature can be a bit of a bitch when it comes to digging up beds and letting next-door's cat use my recently planted cauliflowers (right) as loo roll.

Firstly I got some of the tougher root vegetables on the go - carrots, parsnips and my personal favourite potatoes.  My dad is Irish and always grows his own very successful potato crop every year and now I feel it is part of my heritage to grow amazing potatoes too. Sadly this didn’t go to a great start, even though I had my ‘chitted’ potatoes (chitted is the very poncy gardening term for ‘sprouting’, which I like to use because it sounds funny) ready to plant.  My spuds were chitting all over the place and after their great achievements I planted them upside down and very nearly had another famine on my hands.

After an embarrassing call to the old man I had to dig them up and re-plant them. But don’t panic, I noticed just yesterday that they are starting to shoot, so even after the shakiest or dumbest of starts, it always works out in the end - and four months from now I will be having potatoes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner as all good Irish daughters should.

It’s okay though, just a hitch on the road to success! After the potato disaster that we don’t like to mention too much, we got in some peas, lettuce, rocket, courgettes, onions, cauliflowers and lots of herbs. Something I have learnt from watching Monty Don and Alan Titchmarsh is that for all the veg you plant you also have to get some flowers in there to attract the bees and little pollinating insects that help everything grow and look cool, so I whacked in a few wild flowers, lilies and pansies.

Garden - done.

Now however, I have a mental obsession with my garden. Every morning I look out and expect to see a jungle out there – there never is. And every evening I get home from work and I like to take a turn about the 10sq foot grounds to inspect every single hopeful shoot and get overly excited about the slightest growth or new leaf. When I see weeds I don’t just pull them out, I make them wish they had never even thought about growing there and attack them with an arson of swear words, weed killer and a sharp trowel. I push all of my bored housemates out in the garden to watch things grow and I love the fake excitement that washes over their faces. I can’t help it though, it is really exciting to see this stuff grow - and it’s surviving in north London, not some fancy walled garden in Surrey. Even the heavy London air can make things come to life.

Gardening is something everyone can do, even if you only have some pots and a window. You can get great kitchen herbs or even a peace lily for your living room; indoor plants are also really good for you as they produce oxygen and (apparently) calm you down. But even if it doesn’t, you should try your hand at it anyway as a pack of seeds can cost as little as 50p.

I am eagerly awaiting my first vegetables and am becoming a real garden geek and watching Gardener's World and I fear a picture of A. Titchmarsh will be on my wall sooner than I will admit to, but who cares? This is credit crunch planting, and in a few months I hope to be digging up the rewards with my bra on and not a pair of dungarees in sight.

Get tips and free seeds at www.youfarm.org!