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Do you like pesto, ever thought of having a go at making your own, well, it’s easy-peasy. If you get your skates on, there’s still a week or two before all that free wild garlic and tricorn leek (a milder garlic taste) goes over. You can use both the flower and stems of these plants…
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Well, it looks like we’ve had the driest April in a very long time, no April showers to be seen here in London at least. It’s also the month to start planting out annuals for the summer, so plenty of rain is more than welcome, especially as it takes me a good hour to water…
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Being a Gardener involves sowing, planting out, pruning, snipping flowers to display on the dining table and plucking or digging up the fruit and veg of one’s labours, nice things like that. However, sometimes it’s just plain down ‘n’ dirty work. It gets muddy, cold and wet and there’s those poor throbbing pin-cushion like hands…
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I’ll admit, I’m rather partial to a spot of ‘skip-diving,’ one man’s rubbish… they’re ideal for sourcing old house bricks (more expensive to buy than new ones), with which I like to create rustic, worn-in mosaic paths in the garden. Due to all the trees surrounding my own garden, as lovely as they are, offering…
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Now, it might be looking rather grey and dull out there at the moment, but don’t be fooled, there’s much going on underground (Wombles aside). Come mid-February, all that diligent planting and pruning throughout late autumn and early winter will begin to reveal its reward. A Gardener is a natural optimist who is rewarded more…
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3pm on a cold and frosty Christmas Eve, it’s time to down tools and wrap up my third and final job of the day… and indeed the year. I scoff the remains of a still-warm mince pie courtesy of my client, step back and think to myself, ‘Job done’. And, as with Scrooge, the garden…
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Yesterday, I spent four straight hours raking up and gathering the fallen leaves of autumn, from just one garden. I’ve promised to never again blissfully kick through a neatly piled-up heap of leaves, now I know how much effort is involved. However, the upshot is I now sport biceps as big as Popeye’s. Last week,…
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One of the unexpected perks of this job is the tea and cake (or biscuits) I’m kindly offered, as I go about my tasks. Sometimes, I find myself playing the role of human guinea pig. ‘Frances, I’m trying out this new recipe, would care for a slice and tell me what you think?’ Of course,…
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It’s off into Kentish woodland I go. A neighbour, for whom I occasionally garden and do handy bits ‘n’ bobs, had bought herself a Shepard’s hut, which was to be sited on a plot of woodland left to her by her grandmother. So, three of us set off to assemble it over four-days. It arrived…
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Well, that’s another sympathetic restoration (i.e retaining as much of the original tiles as possible) of a once sad, neglected and tired-looking Victorian front path, completed. There are so many of these beautiful Victorian front paths all-over London, most are of the black and white variety, but there’s a fair smattering of multi-coloured ones too. I…
Frances McKevitt Frances McKevitt The Handy Gardener. John Betjeman Niawki Poddy & Black Sarah Raven The Handy Gardener