Make the most of your garden – @ViewfromthePottingBench

Looking to make the most of your garden? Adam (@ViewfromthePottingBench) started his gardening journey almost five years and since then he has been working endlessly to make it into a colourful haven where he can spend quality time with his family. His gardening mantra is ‘better late than never’ and in this blog, he offers some insight into how he lives by that.

Our garden is quite a small space but is longer than it is wide, which at least means that our borders are quite long (but not very deep!). Along one side runs a border with conifers, herbs and other evergreens which rarely needs touching, but adds so much greenery all through the year, it’s a dream really! The other side is my pride and joy, filled with perennials as far as the eye stretches and it’s constantly changing, that’s the beauty of gardening – nothing needs to stay the same forever.

Aside from the border that I’ve mentioned we’ve got a beautiful slightly sloped rockery that we’ve crammed with scented salvias, lavender and tonnes of other bits and pieces. It’s mainly purple and white but I’ve included splashes of orange too this year from Helenium, Geums and the odd Osteospermum there’s a huge trend of purple and orange at the moment so we’re unintentionally bang on trend!

When we moved in about 5 years ago it was such a blank canvas, which is every gardener’s dream really. That said, we had our fair share of challenges, mainly creating a functional seating space for us and our girls – which I think has been the most fun so far.

There was a space next to the potting shed that had an old broken greenhouse on it, and it was only when we took that away that we realised just how much space we had there.

During the first lockdown, we set about building a pergola from scratch and then added a railway sleeper bench and chipped slate on the floor and now we’ve got a great space to enjoy all year round – weather permitting!

My aim for this year is to get to a place where the garden is starting to give back, more than just with its beauty. We’re dabbling properly with veg this year with potatoes in bags, garlic in a raised bed along with carrots and endless herbs…BUT we’d also like to be creating our own compost too, so thankfully that is where the Easy Mix 2-in-1 composter comes in!

1. I’m so excited to use the EasyMix because having a small garden means that we just don’t have the space for traditional compost bays but this is going to really give us an opportunity to try something new and create our own organic matter to give our plants a boost.
2. I’m also so so excited for the BioMix, I love making my own fertiliser, so this is just going to be an absolute game changer for sure. We get our girls involved with all aspects of the garden so they’re going to really enjoying all of this with us too. Plus, I love a good gadget!!

Adam @ViewFromThePottingBench has always been a keen gardener but in the last few years he has started to take it more ‘seriously’ and think about the garden properly – more than just a lawn with some plants.