Profile
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| User: | fragrantzodiack (963059) |
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| Name: | Fragrant Zodiack | |||||
| Location: | South-eastern England, United Kingdom | |||||
| Birthdate: | 1959-03-23 | |||||
| E-mail: | fragrantzodiack@yahoo.co.uk | |||||
| LJ Talk: |
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| AOL IM: |  ukbrisingamen (Add Buddy, Send Message) | |||||
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| Bio: | I keep my main journal at ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} brisingamen and you can find out more about me there. Here I want to chronicle my 'adventures' in gardening in rather more depth than some people over there may want to read. I garden in south-east England, about twenty miles east along the coast from Derek Jarman's garden, and while salt sea air is not an issue for me as I'm a mile or so inland, Kent's taxing Mediterranean summers certainly are. At the back of the house, I garden on clay-type soil, in what USDA would classify as Zone 8, and I have a slug problem that borders on the nightmarish. The back garden is sheltered, though it gets morning and midday sun in high summer, not to mention stray patches as the sun moves past the rooftops, and doesn't often get much frost, except in hard winters. Here, oI'm planning to grow a variety of fruit, salad vegetables and cottage flowers. I am hoping I can use recycled water for irrigation as needful, and mulching, of course. The front garden is more like zone 10, subject to the penetrating stare of the sun for much of the middle of the day, and the soil bakes to a delightful dust in summer. Mulching would, I think, be a good idea, but mainly I'm planning to plant drought-resistant flowers – think California, South African fynbos, Mediterranean hillsides. In winter it's a little more squishy but I dug a lot of gravel in a few years back, to improve drainage, and this seems to have helped. Meanwhile, down the road and around the corner, at plot 30a is my new allotment. I'd like to say it's lovely and shiny, but it's been neglected for nearly a year and so it requires weeding, digging, weeding again (mares-tail), more digging, double-digging with manure, etc. It may need a miracle. Fpr now, it has me. I believe in compost, recycling and being as organic as possible. I also believe in the preservation of heritage varieties (I support the Heritage Seed Library at the Henry Doubleday Research Association) and old gardening techniques where not inimical to personal health and wildlife. I believe in good tools and terracotta pots. I believe that a well-tended vegetable garden or allotment is a thing of beauty, and that there is always a place for a clump of flowers. My gardens won't be design statements, but they will be beautiful places to sit, and they'll be productive too. My gardening heroes, in no particular order are the late Harry Dodson, Peter Thoday, Monty Don, the Tradescants (father and son), Gertrude Jekyll, Margery Fish, Tim Smit, Bob Flowerdew, the late, great Geoff Hamilton, and the myriad unnamed plant collectors, breeders, gardeners and allotment holders who've kept the faith through the centuries. And last but not least, peake, who scarcely knows a weed from a flower, but who is always willing to help with the heavy digging and the disposal of bindweed!These Weather Pixies will give you some idea of the weather around here. This Pixie is linked to Manston, which is probably 30-something miles from here, almost directly north, and much closer to the north coast. And the other weather pixie is linked to Lydd Airport, on the south coast of Kent, about twenty miles eastward of here, and probably a little more representative of the weather I'm likely to be getting. | |||||
| Interests: | 32: allotments, bulbs, companion planting, compost, composting, container gardening, cottage gardens, day lilies, edwin lutyens, exotic salad greens, flowery meads, garden history, gardening, gardens, gertrude jekyll, hardy geraniums, henry doubleday research association, herbs, kitchen gardens, knot gardens, margery fish, papaver, parterres, pelargoniums, poppies, royal horticultural society, scented-leaf plants, slug traps, variegated herbs, vegetables, walled gardens, worm bins | |||||
| Schools: | None listed | |||||
| Friends: | ||||||
| Friend of: | 42: amaliedageek, ang_grrr, boxofdelights, brisingamen, classics_cat, crazysoph, desperance, dmw, dormous, drdoug, eleyan, fidelioscabinet, fragrantzodiack, fuchsoid, gummitch, gwyneira, headgardener, heleninwales, huswyf, idahoswede, karmicnull, mamculuna, maryread, miramon, nellorat, numbat, pantryslut, peake, pennan, persimmon, phoebesmum, purpletigron, redbird, replyhazy, sam_t, ssprince, the_gardener, timill, tysolna, vgqn, white_hart, wrdnrd | |||||
| Member of: | 5: gardening, horticulture, livejardin, patio_gardens, thepottingshed | |||||
| Account type: | Basic Account | |||||
