More often than not I am cutting them down [Achillea, Anenome, Echinacea, Iris, Phlox, Rudbeckia, Salvia etc etc] and squeezing them into green wheelie bins, ladybirds and all. Feeling slightly guilty, I wait for these creatures to climb to the top of the stems, pick them off and attempt to find them a new home in the now naked garden. It is true what they say; leaving dead stems will provide homes for insects [beneficial as well as the pests] to hibernate through the winter and is one horticultural ‘good practice’ reason not to do the chop.

Another reason to leave them is for their structural contribution to the winter garden. No one can deny how interesting dead stems can look after a hard frosty night, all icy and crystallized. I am a huge fan of this transformation and is my excuse for being ultimately lazy and not lifting a finger in my own garden till the spring.

However, not all plant specimens are good for this purpose. Many perennials and grasses disappointingly flop, strew themselves all over the ground and look a complete mangled hash. Molinia caerulea subsp. arundinacea ‘Transparent’ starts off by showing such wonderful promise. Tall, elegant, fawn-coloured stems gleam in the border, but then, overnight they flop. Drat. I have two of these grasses in the garden and so wish I’d gone for a sturdier Miscanthus instead.

With clients who don’t mind what I do with their stems, I always go with the ‘flop chop’ approach. All the sturdy stems I like stay and the flopped ones I don’t are cleared away. I’m happy, the bugs are happy, the client’s not really bothered.

The ‘leave or not to leave’ preference has even impacted on my planting design plans, particularly perennial and grass based schemes. All clients want low maintenance as well as year round colour and interest in their borders. Choosing plants that keep their structure well into winter is an important consideration and one that I have been making mental notes about over recent years.

Some favourites for keeping upright and strong stemmed are the umbels of Sedum and Achillea millefolium [‘Terracotta’ holds really well], the tiny spherical seedheads of Anenome, the spires of Digitalis and Verbascum, the whorls of Phlomis and the shorter billowy grasses Hakonechloa and Stipa tenuissima. Miscanthus, as mentioned already, is great for winter plume structure, Eupatorium maculatum for big perennial umbel structure and Ligularia japonica for fluffy seedheads that will be blown away in the winds. There are loads of suitable candidates out there, it’s just a matter of bearing in mind what happens to them after they have performed for the summer/autumn months…do they flop or not?

The main reasons for leaving them be in my own garden [above], are, in order of importance: first has to be ease of maintenance [laziness], second structure [I don’t usually do the ‘flop chop’ approach here either], third hibernating bugs, fourth I’d like to say annoy the neighbours, but they probably don’t give a monkeys about how my front garden looks and fifth because as soon as I sniff that lovely warming earthy smell of spring I can get out there and clear away the cobwebs till my hearts content.

So what kind of person are you, to leave or not to leave?

So sparkly lights and pots full of winter bedding plants have cheered me up. I still have loads of apples, some are being stored, some are destined for the chickens [yes I have fruit-loving poots too] and some will be used to make even more of River Cottage’s irresistible Bramley Lemon Curd. Fruitshare has been bigger than ever this year, thanks to Twitter and the lovely people out there that have supported it. But there is a long way to go yet before it becomes a truly successful initiative.

The Newsround feature didn’t come off. The move to Salford and a change of heart with the producer meant that the cameras didn’t roll. I was disappointed. I felt awful that I had lined up a small team of willing children and fruit sharing mums to have to call it all off. The idea was to follow a fruit sharing journey, where apples would be collected from the garden of one family and given to another. Then, the fruit seeking family would get stuck in, aprons on, scales out, to transform the free apples into lovely puddings and jams.

Well, as it happened, it was decided that the fruit sharing journey would be recorded anyway! Not quite by a camera crew but by my trusty old camera instead. Kim Carmyllie [Mum, baker of fabulous cakes, Cub leader and IT Manager] was [and is] my Fruitshare star from sunny old Bolton who was still up for doing a fruit sharing rendezvous. I had recently discovered an untouched crop of the most delicious apples too and desperately needed someone to pass them on to!

The meeting took place over half term so I could get the kids to help out. Our first mission was to pick the apples. The tree is in the midst of a construction site for a self-build project [potential client] so the picking became more of an adventure. Mud and diggers everywhere. The son was in his element. After sliding down an embankment of excavated soil…we all fell silent; spell bound. No, not with more construction machinery, we had disturbed a young Roe deer who had been hiding in nearby undergrowth. We watched for a while before it bounded off across the fields. Magic. I have to point out that this plot of land is surrounded by busy roads just on the outskirts of Bury!

On with the apple picking, nettle stinging and embankment sliding we went and filled all our baskets. I am not sure what variety of apple it is but they are good eaters [and cookers as we later found out]. The tree has a beautiful shape and the branches fall all the way down to the ground; I have never seen one like it. The area used to be a small orchard and this is one of two trees that remain. I hope they decide to plant more.

With kids prepped to be on their best behaviour, off to Kim’s kitchen we went with our bounty. You can tell Kim enjoys her baking; a kitchen table full of baking goodies; home-made jams; chutneys; an apple jelly in the making; cupboards crammed with flours, sugars and spices. What would we make? This important decision was left to the kids…apple cake followed by apple and ginger jam. We all got stuck in; weighing, mixing, peeling, beating, pouring, sprinkling and the inevitable spoon licking!

I’m not sure on the exact recipe Kim used but I have located one that is similar here [we didn't add the toffee]. Once the cakes were poured into their cases the kids piled on an extra ingredient, demerara sugar, to give it a lovely sweet and crunchy crust. We popped them in the oven for around 40 minutes and boy those baking aromas were delicious!

Next, the apple and ginger jam. I have found a recipe, again similar to the one Kim used, on another blog here. Kim used stem ginger though and added in the syrup too. We chopped the apples and put them in a pan with the water and waited… and waited… and waited for them to turn into the pulpy texture we were expecting. The mystery apple seems to hold on to its texture when cooked…so a ‘chunky’ apple and ginger jam it was to be!

We were with Kim for a good few hours and enjoyed every minute; so a big thank you goes out to her We even got to take home some jars of jam and one of the apple cakes…both utterly delicious!

The harvest season is practically over, although I know there will still be thousands of trees out there hanging on to their fruits. The Fruitshare website will have some new features added for next year and I’m hoping for bigger and better publicity too. No doubt I will keep you all posted. Thank you again to all those that have supported this very new initiative x

It began with an article about Fruitshare in my local newspaper the Bolton News, [thankfully the online version doesn't have the cheesy photo]. The article miraculously instigated two further publicity leads, a stint on BBC Radio Manchester with Heather Stott and, the cherry on top…an email from CBBC’s Newsround producer to say they’d like to feature Fruitshare! Obviously I said ‘yeah’!

I’m now in the process of gathering some ideas… potential gardens, Fruitsharers and Fruitseekers that would be up for a bit of stardom. I think I have sussed the first two…but just need someone from around Bolton or Manchester, preferably with kids [age 6 to 12], with a bit of a passion for baking [or jam making or whatever] to be our featured Fruitseeker. I shall thus be approaching those already registered on the Fruitshare website to see if I can find that special star…filming will take place over the next couple of weeks.

I’m very much excited about this little bit of national coverage for Fruitshare and keep my fingers crossed that it might just, maybe, possibly lead to a little bit more…I need to keep that publicity ball rolling. This week I will be around in the office a bit more so will continue the Fruitshare.net tweeting. If you happen to spot one, please do continue to retweet…it all really helps.

The number of registrations on the Fruitshare website keep rising, especially on the ‘Fruit Wanted’ list. My next mission is to try and up the numbers on the ‘Fruit Available’ list. Any Fruitseekers reading this, if you know of anyone living nearby that has a fruit tree growing in their garden please let them know about Fruitshare. This poster could be used in local shops or even posted through letterboxes to help spread the word in your area.

I will keep you all posted on how the Newsround feature develops and who will be the Fruitseeker star!

Thanks all and happy fruitsharing x

My eagerness for wanting to find and try fruit was, all of a sudden, completely quenched with the onset of the apple harvest season. I gathered unwanted apples of all shapes and sizes from the gardens I worked on, made enough apple crumbles and apple Dorest cakes to feed the five thousand and had enough surplus apples to keep family and friends extremely happy. It was an overwhelming time and they weren’t even my apple trees.

Borne from this abundant apple frenzy is fruitshare.net. I wanted to find a way of sharing this unwanted garden grown fruit, not just in the area I live but to make it accessible to people across the country. The website was set up and then redeveloped a year later in partnership with another fruit enthusiast, Richard Borrie from orangepippin.com, into a fully working database driven website. We are now in the beginnings of our second harvest season and we are keen to spread the word about the Fruitshare initiative as the more people that know about it the more sharing of the country’s forgotten fruits will take place.

Hence, I am now on a little mission to get as much publicity as I possibly can, and by publicity I mean national… and beyond. I think the idea is a great one, but I am biased I know. What would be really really cool is if all of the grow your own/buy and source local/encourage sustainable food endorsing celebrities/organisations would give Fruitshare a big thumbs up and link up to us from their websites  …but, lets be honest, that would just be dreaming. So, back to reality, a press release is the normal first port of call. Done. This has been sent out to a whole raft of publications from local press [they're getting a bit fed up of me now I can tell], specialist magazines, national newspapers to BBC Breakfast! If anyone has close friends or relations at any of the major news publications please do get in touch!

You’re probably sensing that I’m not getting very far with the traditional publicising route; well you’d be pretty much spot on. Time is ticking, I don’t have oodles of free time to be chasing illusive ‘contacts’ I’ve been dragging out of the internet, I need a new plan.

Twitter. You’re very likely to be reading this because of Twitter. Fruitshare.net wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Twitter [Richard from Orangepippin contacted me via Twitter]. My other half rolls his eyes every time I mention Twitter…like many other other halves I am sure. People love Twitter, people hate Twitter. Twitter has had bad press, has been blamed for the recent youth riots, but, it was also the cause for the mass community clean ups that followed. It has a good side and bad side; I want to bring out its great side.

With Twitter on my mind I have devised a new little plan, just to see how far I can publicise Fruitshare by just tweeting. As Fruitshare’s website is purely in existence today due to Twitter what better way to see the initiative evolve into an international phenomenon [there's no harm in thinking BIG!].

So here’s the plan. If you think the Fruitshare idea is a great one and would like to get involved by spreading the word just simply retweet my tweets about Fruitshare. My mission is to tweet appropriate publications/media/organisations details of and a link to the Fruitshare site plus a link to this blog in the hope that they will give coverage to the scheme.

That’s it. Not rocket science I know. It may be a complete belly flop from which I’ll need to pick myself up and put my thinking cap on again. But, I’m up for giving it a go as I really would like to see people making the most out of the nation’s forgotten garden fruits. Please help by spreading the word. Thank you x

UPDATE 12/09/11

It is day 6 of the Fruitshare campaign and so far the blog stats have rocketed, the retweets have been immense and the lists on the fruitshare.net site are getting longer! Support and feedback has been really positive and I thank everyone who has spread the word so far.

One other idea I’ve come up with to help promote the Fruitshare initiative is a little A4 poster that can be downloaded from here, printed out and pinned to notice boards up and down the country [and beyond] in offices, cafes and shops. I’m demanding I know. I am duly printing them off myself and will be loading up the other half with them [who's still rolling his eyes at me] to put up around his workplace. I shall go and hassle all the shop owners, with big smiles.

I am still persisting with the Twitter campaign, although I do sense most are now fully informed with the whole Fruitshare thing…I apologies for my one track mind and repetitiveness. It shall all be over with the end of the harvests! My mission is still to get some national media coverage [I'm afraid I'm still thinking BIG]; and would love anyone to contact me for the official Fruitshare press release [mentioned earlier], for a chat about the project or any other ideas on how to spread the Fruitshare word. As you’ve probably guessed, I’m a bit passionate about the whole affair and will even share my precious, maturing sloe gin with anyone who can steal me that national slot for Fruitshare!

Thank you everyone, happy Fruitsharing x

Ornamental grasses have become increasingly popular in recent years and I am one amongst the gardening fraternity that has also fallen hook, line and sinker for them. I think my love for them started with discovering the wispy fluffy plumes of Stipa tenuissima many moons ago. The slightest breeze will make them billow and sway, giving planting schemes movement and depth, especially when repeat planted.

Using grasses in perennial schemes is a style that was brought to the forefront of the planting design world by the Dutch plantsman Piet Oudolf. His planting schemes are jaw-droppingly sublime, magical and somehow manage to epitomise nature. This ‘naturalistic style’ of planting evolved through observing how grasses and perennials grew in the wild, concentrating on structure and the textural qualities of each plant. It is this link to nature that appeals to many [including me] and is probably the reason why grasses have become enormously popular today.

In true Piet Oudolf style, I will go though some classic ornamental grasses that have become my favourites to use in planting schemes by their structural form. Starting with transparent, and there are many in this category, is a form that tends to include the taller grasses that create a see-through screen. Molinia caerulea subsp. arundinacea ‘Transparent’ [ridiculously long Latin name I know] or commonly known as Purple Moor Grass has incredibly elegant feathery spikelets that will catch the slightest breeze. Their fine see-through flowering stems will reach around one meter in height and will contrast beautifully with bolder perennials. It will do well in most soil conditions as long as it is not too dry, will tolerate light shade but does best in full sun.

Stipa gigantea is another transparent grass but instead of a fine fizz of flowerheads this grass has golden oat-like flowers on huge arching stems; once established they can reach 2.5m in height. It is a lovely majestic grass, definitely for the back of a border and will add height and shimmer in the evening summer sunlight. One last transparent must-have grass is Deschampsia cespitosa Goldtau [pictured below]. Another elegant grass with finely textured flowerheads on long slender stems it will give your borders an extraordinarily magical, almost dreamlike quality. Plant as single specimens dotted amongst perennials for maximum sublime effect.

Grasses for foliage texture is another structural form and offers an important contrast to other plants. Carex comans ‘Frosted Curls’ [also pictured below] is a small evergreen grass with silvery leaves that curl at the tips. Its fine, wiry texture looks great next to broader leaf forms like Alchemilla mollis, even the purple sage in the picture, and gives you interest all year round. Also pictured here is another grass Molinia caerulea subsp. caerulea ‘Variegata’ [these Molinia’s like these long Latin names] which has unusual cream and pale green variegated leaves. This particular grass gives you the best of both worlds, textural leaf contrast as well as the transparent qualities from its purple flower spikelets, which reach around 0.6m high.

One last grass in this category is Hakonechloa macra [again pictured below]. I love this grass and first discovered it only a few years ago in a garden I went to visit [I think it was Dunham Massey, near Altrincham]. The specimen I saw was obviously very happy in its position and very mature as it was a substantial hummock of cascading fresh green leaves. If there is one grass that epitomises nature itself, lush green fields and meadows in the spring, it has to be this grass. On a recent garden design project my client wanted to reduce the maintenance of his garden [bad knee] and decided [begrudgingly] to dig up the lawn, in favour of a more practical patio area. I immediately told him about this grass and suggested we should surround the patio area with borders and plant them en masse with Hakonechloa macra. He went for the idea and now, a year on from planting up, reclining on that patio gives you the impression of a lush green field, albeit in the middle of a suburban garden.

The final category is plumes. This form is a soft, fluffy inflorescence that acts as a great companion to the more bold forms of plants. Astilbes and Filipendulas are classic perennial examples of plume flowers, but there are a couple of grasses that also fit the bill. Stipa tenuissima, which I mentioned at the beginning, creates a plume-like shape, great for softening and blending a planting scheme. Another plume grass is Calamagrostis brachytricha which has rather tall [up to 1.5m] fluffy flowerheads tinged silvery grey with a hint of purple. Use in the middle of a border to soften harder structural forms like Echinops ‘Taplow Blue’.

Ornamental grasses offer garden plantings a wealth of additional qualities that traditional plant types like perennials, roses and shrubs just cannot give. From majestic to magical, textural to just plain practical, there is one out there that will convert you; it’s just a matter of time.

My beautiful new trees arrived yesterday after a heart-in-mouth moment earlier in the week when the original specimens arrived far far too tall. Six initial replacements didn’t make the grade either so the ordering of these new specimens and their arrrival in time yesterday was hugely critical. They are now planted, trimmed and all tweaked and I have to say they are looking great.

Planting has started, but today it is my mission to get it completely finished and with the worst sleep to date I’m heading in super early to get a head start. We’ve even been put on the ‘early list’ so we can actually get on site an hour early. I suspect the ‘Coleman event shelter’ will be worth its weight in gold today…we’ve positioned it over the garden so the work can carry on full steam ahead whatever the weather!

The majority of plants arrived today and are now sitting in pride of place under Graham’s Coleman event shelter as well as sprawling out across the rest of our surrounding space. You can never have too many plants…always best to have more than you actually need! Still waiting on some other specimens to arrive though including some replacement birch trees.

The surprise I would never have guessed. A brand spanking new PINK cement mixer kindly donated to use for the build up week by Travis Perkins. It’s certainly turning a few heads that’s for sure! This, together with a super enormous Coleman event shelter [I remember the pair of us drooling over Chris Beardshaw's team's event shelter in 2009; Graham was so smitten with it he went and bought one!] kicked the day off to a great start.

The first day always involves faffing. Here I mean important and constructive faffing… marking out, double checking measurements, digging, more digging and starting the foundations. Wall heights are a big issue in the back to back category as no one wants a neighbouring wall towering above anyone elses. We’re on a sloping site so careful calculations and negotiations with the Show Manager have taken place. By end of play, with the help of our volunteers Andy and Adam plus the two lovely fund raising ladies, Clare and Wendy, all is set for the arrival of the super brickies in the morning.

The block wall shot up at a phenomenal rate of knots while I raced down to Garstang, Preston [with hubby roped in to help out] to visit a great little plant nursery for some back up specimens/ substitutes and to collect the pile of birch tree logs we helped fell a couple of weeks back [wood thinning]. The plant sourcing proved successful, although I hadn’t planned to purchase so many and it was a very tight squeeze to fit them all in the back of the Ranger.

The next stop for the logs presented an unexpected challenge. The dodging of swarming bees. Well, if I’m honest more like legging it out the way and jumping in the Ranger until the coast was clear…Ranger electric window decides to quit working at this crucial ‘take cover’ moment…not at all good. The gods must have been with us as the bees shifted up and away over the farm house. I was later coaxed round by the bee keeper to see if they had landed…a crawling, buzzing bough of honey bees. Magnificent. Bees… and cute little kittens… distractions over, logs loaded, the journey down the M6 to the Tatton site was a noisy, breezy and wet one. Any electric window experts passing Tatton tomorrow…please help.

Back at the garden and the walling is up, ready and waiting for the rendering; which is the first job on the to-do-list in the morning. Getting the logs tidy and marked up for cutting is the next challenge, together with the start of the constant on-site plant nurturing regime…dead-heading, staking and watering. Thank goodness for all the volunteers!

Summer, in theory, has arrived. However, June, in reality has been a tad on the disappointing side; May wasn’t that great either. I don’t, obviously, refer to the South but the North West. A couple of days ago the daytime temperature here was just over 9˚C followed by a rather chilly evening; we ended up lighting the wood burner [the one in the lounge, not in the garden]. Doesn’t sound much like June does it.

Earlier this year, around Easter, the North West was blessed with some dry weather; we certainly deserve it after four consecutive years of wash out summers. I often joke about how the wetter summers being entirely my fault… they arrived the first season I set about the gardening round. But they are no laughing matter; gardening in the rain is certainly no fun; postponing jobs means postponing your income; and, more worryingly, they allude to a more sinister underlying fear that our climate really is changing.

The delicately balanced world we inhabit is being bombarded by all manner of ecological assaults [pollution, depleting resources like oil, mass farming, GM crops...etc]; it is inevitable that there will be consequences somewhere down the line. You only need to watch Professor Brian Cox’s ‘Wonders of the Universe’ to realise how humanity hinges on a myriad of scientific laws, subtleties and what seem like incredibly random coincidences. Our world is sensitive and even the smallest changes are bound to make a difference at some point; it is only logical.

Living more sustainably [eyes rolling or not] is gaining in momentum and is something I’m having a go at; from making a conscious effort to buying British to growing my own fruit [and harping on to everyone else how great and easy it is to grow]; to buying the kids chickens instead of rabbits [got to have something that earns its keep].

As gardeners we tend to be patient and appreciate the seasons, we will plant bulbs in the autumn and look forward to their colourful blooms six or seven months later. We will plant young fruit trees and happily wait a few years for the first fruits, we can plant an acorn with the thought that we probably won’t see it in its maturity…but our children will. I love this about gardening and have realised that living sustainably commands the same kind of patience and forward thinking.

There are many things that we can do in the garden to reduce our impact on the environment. Recycling water, from collecting rain in butts to re-using our grey water from our sinks or baths is an obvious step… although up here in the North West we seem to have enough rainfall during the supposedly dry summer months to not have to do this…at all. Next would be the organic way by avoiding the use of pesticides and harnessing nature’s natural predators and remedies to do the work. Growing-your-own is a sustainable choice and the idea of using our gardens more resourcefully is without doubt becoming even more popular.

However, there is a darker side to gardeners. One of the most contentious issues facing the horticultural world and the home gardener is the use of peat. Peat is in demand as a growing medium for our plants because it possesses a number of qualities; it has the capacity to hold good amounts of air and water and has naturally low pH and nutrients… which suits a diverse range of plant species. The problem is peat is a natural material formed by the decay of the sphagnum moss, found growing in wetland bogs, taking hundreds of years to form. Peat lands also have the ability to store carbon [CO2] rather than releasing it all into the atmosphere, making them incredibly important habitats to help balance our increasingly warming climate.

The horticultural demand for peat to fill our hanging baskets, containers and seed trays has resulted in the loss of an incredible 94% of the UK’s lowland peat bogs since the beginning of the 19th century [according to figures from The Wildlife Trust]. What are left are fragmented areas struggling to regenerate. No garden, no matter how spectacular, should knowingly be at the expense of our natural habitat.

There are numerous peat ‘alternatives’ available made from a range of different by-products like coir [coconut fibre], leaf mould, green compost [council compost], garden compost, composted bracken, wood based residues, worm compost and other natural manures. If you live up North, check out Dalefoot Composts in Cumbria www.dalefootcomposts.co.uk for some very interesting sustainable alternatives.

Another option, and a very cost-effective one, is making your own compost. One thing I would add to this previous post [gained from my recent experiences of becoming a chicken keeper] is that chicken poop plus the biodegradable bedding I use [Bliss Bedding] has created the hottest and steamiest compost heap I have ever had! It’s incredible! Within five weeks of having the chickens I noticed the change in the heap; the brown and green stuff ratio is obviously perfectly balanced now and with the regular decanting of chicken droppings into the bin it also gets more of a mix…speeding up the whole decomposing process. All-in-all…chickens rock!

Since writing this article for BL Magazine back in May, Mark Diacono has written a brilliant article for the Daily Telegraph ‘Do we need to use peat?’ which goes into more depth about the alternatives and is accompanied by Monty Don’s peat-free compost recipes.

So, the next time you’re planning to fill up your hanging baskets look out for compost with the Peat Free label on the bag; if they don’t stock any…don’t stand for it, complain and demand the alternatives. By 2020 all growing media products for home gardeners are to be Peat Free… if new Government targets are reached…

The term ‘self-sustainability’ has been around for rather a long time and while I suspect many of us continue to aspire to be modern day Tom and Barbaras, the world we live in is still heavily reliant on mass production. We horde to the supermarket temples in our millions every week for the convenience shop, as well as the BOGOF bargains. I too am guilty. But, how do we really change our comfortable habits and move, en masse, to a more self-sustainable way of life? Our lifestyles will have to re-evolve at some point, not necessarily by converting our back gardens into mini productive farms like Tom and Barbara, but by finding simple ways of transforming our own outdoor spaces into more imaginative and resourceful places.

The article in  The Telegraph [07/03/11] regarding Prince Charles’ endorsement of how growing organic fruit and veg can save the world is not far from my harpings on about the benefits of growing and sharing fruit. ‘Gardener’s are key to saving the environment’ [he says] and even the smallest plot can ‘make a difference by sucking up carbon, providing food and creating habitat’. Gardeners are doing a very splendid job, they have been for a while, especially those who are wholeheartedly organic and have embraced growing-their-own. The problem is how do we get the busy non-gardeners to embrace this more sustainable grow-your-own activity?

Why do we need to change? The constant barrage of news articles on issues that are detrimental to our existence remind us on a daily basis. Here I mean issues like genetically modified crops; imported food and the associated food miles; depleting resources [like oil and peat products]; intensive farming regimes; and then there’s the big one…climate change; to even obesity and the nation’s unhealthy obsession with cheap and processed foods. Throw in the current economic downturn, rising living costs and the consequent penny pinching… it’s all very depressing.

Our gardens are hugely important spaces, yet a majority simply have no time for them. Front gardens are paved over for our precious cars, borders are left for weeds to flourish and larger areas are grassed for the apparent ease of maintenance; then the Flymos are dusted off for a quick skid over once a month. Then there are the bare-soil gardens with borders completely void of anything remotely green and lush. All this seems shamefully wasteful.

Maybe one answer to getting everyone involved in self-sustainability is to look back at the 1950′s ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign. With food supplies in short supply, people had no choice but to transform and cultivate their gardens into tiny productive plots. Roses were uprooted and our gardens became the trading life force of our communities; eggs, cabbages, potatoes, strawberries, tomatoes and whatever other home grown produce was bartered amongst neighbours. This was the ultimate in local food sustainability.

A more realistic approach for the non-gardening sustainable wannabes with little time would be… to grow fruit! You may laugh, guffaw and roll your eyes but it all makes sense. Fruit is very easy to grow, easier than growing, tending and protecting delicate vegetable seedlings, easier than maintaining a lawn [the proper way and not the aforementioned Flymo regime way]. Fruit is tough and comes in a range of very tolerant forms like perennials, canes, shrubs, climbers and trees. It is also very easy to add a few strawberry plants to a perennial border; replace an overgrown shrub with some raspberry canes; dig out the dead cordylines and plant a robust fruit tree or two instead; or brighten up a dreary corner with some bold leafy rhubarb.

Fruit is also very expensive to buy in the supermarkets…and the varieties grown for mass consumption are usually tasteless…and more often than not flown in from Europe or America. Growing fruit in your own back garden will save you money, will taste so much better and will generally produce such an abundance that you won’t have to worry about getting your five-a-day. The only downside is that buying fruit specimens will be more than the cost of a packet of seeds, but it is a one off purchase that will last many, many years [my father-in-law has a 40-year-old rhubarb that is still growing strong].

Fruit is also beautiful, can be very structural and is beneficial to insects by providing an abundant and rich source of nectar. Growing fruit puts us back in tune with our seasons, is brilliant for our children [they will gobble up a plate of fruit while turning their noses up at veg!] and is packed full of super healthy vitamins. Ok, growing fruit won’t make you entirely self-sufficient, but it’s a huge step in the right direction…and you never know where it will take you.

Prince Charles is right to say that the smallest of plot can ‘make a difference by sucking up carbon, providing food and creating habitat’… but to have significant impact we all need to get on-board and have a go at growing our own. For those of us that already do this, brilliant, a golden star all round [sorry influence of the five-year-old!]; the next challenge is to convert the masses!

Thankfully there are many out there that are trying to persuade more people to embrace a more sustainable life. Startuk.org [set up by The Prince’s Charities]; the Slow Food movement; Soil Association to smaller initiatives like incredible-edible-todmorden.co.uk and fruitshare.net are all trying to chip away at re-evolving the way we live.

To most the idea of being self-sustainable will be either a dream or an impossibility. But by taking a small step and simply growing more fruit in our gardens we are setting into motion a whole list of benefits that will help us to live a more sustainable life. We will re-connect with how and where our food comes from, grow to appreciate the seasons, eat and share more super fruits, educate our children, acquire new skills, refine our tastes for fresher and better food, reduce fruit miles, saves those pennies, we could even start bartering with our neighbours! We just need to find more ways to tantalise, persuade and nudge the non-gardeners to give it a go.