Letting nature back into the garden

CoirProducts.co.uk Featured Grower this week is Sarah @cotswoldpotager. In this blog post, Sarah shares with us how she got into gardening, what she loves to grow, some of the most valuable lessons she has learnt, and much more. She tells us how gardening has helped with her mental health, and reminds us to ‘let nature into our garden’. Read on to learn all about Sarah’s gardening journey. 

Growing up, Sarah’s interest in gardening stemmed from helping her mum plant flowers in their garden. “My mum is an amazing gardener,” she says. Later, it was only when she had children herself that she got into growing vegetables with them. Recounting those early days of growing, she adds, “the first thing we grew was peas and after seeing them grow and tasting fresh peas straight from the pod I was hooked!” Although she started growing in her small back garden, Sarah says, “when my mum moved to the same village as me she had a long garden and I managed to beg her to lend me the space at the end for a kitchen garden.” 

Much of what Sarah has learnt about gardening has been through trial and error. Sarah started off with raised beds made out of reclaimed scaffold boards, as she is on heavy clay, yet after 4 years they started to fall apart. “When I started to take them apart to replace them, I realised how many slugs were hiding against the wood! I quickly realised that having no sides to my beds was going to be much better for keeping pests under control (I am an organic gardener, so I don’t use any chemicals or pesticides) and after 4 years of practicing no dig the clay was in much better shape for growing in,” she adds. 

Sarah loves growing tomatoes, and this year, she has grown more heritage varieties. “I just absolutely love the rich flavour they bring to sauces. I have a bit of a sweet tooth, so my all time favourite variety to grow is sweet aperitif. It’s a small red cherry and the sweetest variety I have found so far,” she explains. 

When it comes to her gardening successes, Sarah says she has done a lot of research into the best techniques of growing tomatoes, as that’s her favourite thing to grow, and has spent time adapting her growing style for those. In addition, this year she also tried growing both celeriac and Florence fennel, and both have done really well despite the hot dry weather. She adds that this is something she is proud of. 

Her most valuable lesson has been to allow nature into the garden a lot more than she used to. Explaining what she means, Sarah says, “I used to think my kitchen garden had to be pristine. Straight lines of vegetables, absolutely no weeds and any spare land covered in weed membrane to stop the grass and weeds growing. As I’ve grown as a gardener, however, I have realised how important those “messy” areas are to my garden. They encourage beneficial wildlife which help me keep the pests down in natural and eco friendly ways. They encourage wildflowers to grow which brings in pollinators and creates homes and food for some of our diminishing native wildlife. It’s been the biggest joy to me letting go a bit and letting nature back into the garden.”