A Small Patio Diary: Learning to Garden

Gardening has become a big part of my day-to-day this summer so I want to share what I’m learning, the mistakes I’ve made and what I have planned for our tiny outdoor patio space!  If you’re new to it too, please follow along and share your gardening tips and tricks!

Prior to this summer I confess to being a pretty crappy gardener. I’d visit the Garden Centre but would have no clue where to begin, apart from looking for plants with ‘hardy’ in the description.

If you want all the gory details, I’d basically spend £££ on a plant with pretty blooms that would look cracking in a pretty pot, then plonk it outside. That’s it. I wouldn’t water or feed it, deadhead or prune later in the season. I’d just leave it on its lonesome, it then wondering where the hell it had moved to. I didn’t think about the lighting conditions, drainage, the soil or whether the plant was good for the bees and butterflies. I was a crappy gardener. The. Shame.

Notice the verb ‘was’ though? With the help of Monty Don (via the telly), a few therapeutic visits to the Garden Centre with friends, and simply spending some much needed quiet time in our tiny patio space, I’ve gained a little confidence in the past two months.

Our ‘garden’ is split into two sections. Firstly, when you step outside the back door, we have around 5 m² of patio, then there is a communal path shared by neighbours, followed by another 8 m² of patio (of which we don’t currently use apart from bins and the wood store). It’s north facing and has sun till about 3pm and shade for the rest. It’s small and shady for half of the day but for Hebden Bridge, we feel lucky to have any outdoor space for our budget.

We have bedding plants in the second patio, but the neighbours rascal cat keeps using them as a toilet so I’ve been focusing on container gardening in our immediate and smaller patio.

I did some research on plants suitable for pots, ideally perennials, and went from there.  I started off with some old faithful’s – lavender, scabiosa and salvia and invested in a hydrangea and star jasmine too. After a few weeks, and many episodes of Monty Don’s Big Dreams Small Spaces, I realised I was beginning to care for my plants every single day and looked forward to it too. Checking the soil to see if they needed watering, moving the pots if needed for better light and deadheading too; these were all gardening tasks that I’d never done before.

To plant a garden is to believe in tomorrow.

― Audrey Hepburn

Since then, I’ve bought a few more plants (must get better at keeping things simple) and I also bought a mini greenhouse for the seeds I’ve sowed (herbs, lavender and sunflowers). I feel, even just after 2 months, that I’m not an instant gardener anymore. I’m even looking forward to all the seeds I’ll be sowing next year for Spring 2020!

Here’s some of the plants and notes (including my mistakes) from my patio diary June/July:

The Plants

Perennials: David Austen Alnwick Rose, Agapanthus, Echinacea Lavender, Rhodanthemum Plants – Casablanca, Dianthus, Iberis, Sky Rocket Grass, Echinacea, Salvia, Scabiosa, Fuchsia, Star Jasmine

Annuals: Nemesia, Sunflowers (grown from seed)

Herbs: Sage, Basil, Mint, Parsley and Rosemary.

Fruit: Tomatoes (this was a gamble as I sowed late – I will keep you posted).

P.S Plus some I don’t know the names of (see mistakes list below!)

Garden Notes (I’ve learnt more than this but this is all I can remember at the mo)

1 | We have a mix of terracotta and plastic pots. Make sure any plastic pots have drainage holes, you can easily drill through them. Terracotta are porous meaning that your plants won’t need to be watered as often (good if on your holidays).

2| Use broken plant pots for drainage (it’s very therapeutic smashing them up into smaller pieces). Drainage is key for pots in our rainy country!

3| Soak the pots once a week till the water is seen draining from the bottom then leave them be. If they need extra (during heatwaves), I give them another soak mid-week.  I also like misting them with room temperature water. They seem to like that.

4| Deadheading is the best thing ever. So, basically when a flower is ‘spent’ (looks a bit naff/dead/brown) you simply cut it back at an angle just after the nearest leaf, to encourage more blooms and growth. It’s therapeutic, and I love seeing new growth weeks later because of this! It’s a little bit different for roses as you have to cut back to a branch that has 5 leaves on it. Best Googling that, chums!

5| Companion pots – for larger pots you can add more than one variety of plant. I’m trialing out a large bee-friendly pot for our front door at the mo, and it includes lavender, salvia and scabiosa.

6| Rosemary is good for deterring cats – I’m going to plant lots of this in the other patio next year!

7| Broken egg shells are meant to keep slugs at bay. I’ve only just tried this on one of our window boxes, so I will keep you posted.

8| Purple and pink flowers are popular with the bees.

9| If potting on (transfering seedling or young plants) only pot them in a pot that’s around 1-2inches bigger.

10 | It’s all trial and error. Don’t worry too much about the mistakes. Speaking of which…

The Mistakes 

1 | I planted mint with basil, parsley and sage. Rookie mistake. The mint is going WILD and being a big bully to the other herbs. Time to make lots of Mojitos!

2 | Always drill holes in plastic pots! Two of our plants drowned because I didn’t notice.

3 | Keep notes of all the plants names (hence now having this space and a handy notebook!)

4| Plan! Keep it simple with the varieties of plants you have and have a gardening plan, no matter how small your space is.

Let’s see how I get on next month! Can you beleive it’s August already?!