Project One - The Lawn

A small rounded space bordered with herbs, fruit bushes, marigolds and calendula, next to the shed on which will grow blackberries, grapes and hops.
There’s no interesting way to do this, so basically I took the “obliterate everything in my path” approach, found a homeless willing to work for next to nothing and set him to work.

Excerpt from the Secret Garden.
“And through the old oak gate, beyond the towering wall was a pristine
garden, a secret garden, filled with birdsong and the scent of dozens of
roses. The children stepped tentatively inside it, their eyes wide,
lapping up all the beauty with the intensity of a first orgasm”

I was never a fan of children, so watching this film was marred by their presence but I did like the idea of a secret place tucked behind tall walls that only I knew about.

And that is what this allotment is going to be to me, despite having neighbours. In fairness, with one exception, they all seem very nice and friendly, they all say hello then stop to talk and stand there wondering what to do now I have blanked them. I am not being rude when I do this, I am simply wondering how quickly bamboo will grow in order to block them out.

Now, here are some before and during shots of my lawn area.

In The Beginning

Last year, after a nine year wait, I was finally given my own allotment. Now, I live in a top floor flat so my allocated space was going to be more than just a vegetable patch, it was going to be my oasis. I wanted a lawn with a deckchair, somewhere I could throw down a towel in the blazing sun, smell the herbs, reach out and pluck a berry while watching my venture into self-sufficiency come to fruition. 

So the day I unlocked the gate, walked up the path and took in my 250 square metres of weeds in South East London, I nearly passed out with excitement. At least I think it was that because someone did mention I looked peaky the day before. It borders on the nice part, Blackheath, where I live and the awful areas beyond, came with a creaky old shed full of rubbish and a compost heap the size of Porthmadog, which apparently, is also a compost heap.

Now, if like me, your background in gardening was helping your granddad, and trying not to cry when he explained the two big handfuls you were holding up were not in fact tree marbles but his entire crop of young tomatoes, an allotment is going to be an education.

Test the soil first, someone said, it might be lime, it might be clay, it might be riddled with nancies.  Well I’ll have a crack at that at some point but task one was chopping down a field of seeded onions and thistles that had grown to eye level. My excitement, luckily, overruled the dread of the daunting amount of work needed before I could even start gardening, so I got stuck in without moaning, ignoring the aches and the long days and concentrating on the fact that I was going to grow it all, except for beetroot and radish because in my eyes, they should be extinct.

Before I arrived, my allotment belonged to an old man who died. He was very popular, so much so that every single person who walked past my allotment told me so about a hundred times while saying it was a shame it was no longer his but anyway, I was welcome.  I plan on putting up a tall fence to block those people out. I’m here to garden not fill people’s empty lives with chitchat.