The main thing that keeps me up beat about leaving London (in an ideal world we’d stay) is that we are going to have a garden. I hate the fact that we don’t have one right now and even though people always remind me we have the Wanstead flats ‘on our doorstep’, are a stones throw from Epping Forest and have monumental parks like The Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park very close, it just doesn’t really do it in the same way a garden of our own would.
There are so many reasons I want a garden and having a boy I actually think we NEED one! Jimmy is like a little puppy and if he doesn’t get walked and taken out for a run every day then he gets beside himself with too much energy. A garden will be lovely for them both to play in but it will be just so good to open the doors and send Jimmy out to have a run about. I’m looking forward to long sunny summer days playing with the children in paddling pools, water slides and with water pistols just as we’ve been doing at my Mum’s this week where we’ve been visiting. I’m looking forward to alfresco dining, BBQs, buying garden furniture, having parties outside, being able to art and craft without the fear of a carpet being ruined… So many things and not least is because we want to get green fingered!
Florence and Jimmy have friends in London with a raspberry bush in their garden and I want them to be able to have strawberries and raspberries to pick too. I want them to have a vegetable patch and I want to grow flowers, bamboo, all sorts. I’m not pretending to be a gardener at all because I haven’t got a clue but I want the opportunity to learn! I so want that perfect house and garden.
We’ve seen one in the village that we want to buy in. We won’t get this particular house I’m sure because they also have one of the Norwich City footballers bidding on it and let’s face it, if he wants it then he’s going to get it but it’s given us an idea of what we might buy. It has four double bedrooms, two bathrooms, a down stairs cloakroom, a study, a dining room, a huge kitchen diner and a really cosy living room. You could just move right in, it doesn’t need anything doing to it and on top of all that, on top of it having a huge double garage with electricity even, it has the most gorgeously big garden. It’s beautiful with two patio areas and loads of lovely grass. There’s also an area of garden out the front by the garage that I would utilise and turn into a herb garden… One day!
For now, while we wait, we have to make do as we have done ever since the children were born with visits to my Mum’s garden and growing cress in egg shells on our window sill. That’s actually brilliant fun and you can paint faces on the shell then give them a hair cut when it’s grown. We’ve never grown anything more than cress on the window sill because I thought it might be far too difficult but, we have come across this brilliant herb growing kit by Spalding Bulb and it’s perfect for us right now in our flat. We can grow a mini herb garden inside using their herb growing kit and it’s brilliant fun to plant too! This kit is perfect for people without a garden like us and Florence is especially pleased to have been able to do some planting!
The kit really does come with everything you need to grow six different types of herb and I’m particularly impressed that it comes with the compost. We’ve been sent kits to grow before but you always need compost and without a garden this isn’t easy to come by so we’ve always ended up bringing them to my Mum’s. This kit comes with discs which you add water to and then hey presto you have the compost you need to get planting. They’ve thought of everything because once you’ve smoothed the soil into the sections (there’s a divider and the plastic covering packaging over each section is used upside down to then put the soil in), and sprinkled the seeds on, you cut the name of the seeds off the packet and pop them at the edge of each section to let you know what’s growing where!
The children loved the process which was super simple, didn’t take very long and provided little mess. Perfect for us! There’s barely any waste either as most of the packaging is re-used for the growing process and even the plastic lid turns into a little greenhouse at the end for the herbs to grow under.
We will now leave the herbs and spray them with water regularly while we watch them grow! Very exciting. The herb set costs £6.99 which is a mega bargain and when they have grown the children will get to try lots of flavours they would otherwise turn their noses up at but because they will have grown these from seeds they will be willing to try! Spaldin Bulb actually have quite a few kits we might try including mini vegetable kits and an Organic Camomile Tea Kit which I would love to get. Florence and I drink Camomile Tea loads and when Jimmy was a baby I was invited to the Weleda Institute where I saw their amazing Camomile garden and I’d love to grow a little pot of my own to make my own fresh Camomile Tea!
We’ve thoroughly enjoyed the planting of our herbs and we look forward to the end results. What a great way to introduce children to growing when you don’t have a garden to plant things in – brilliant!
This post is part of the Spalding Bulb’s summer blogger challenge.
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