James Walsh’s Edible Garden
The dream is to one day move myself and my family to the countryside where we can enjoy a larger piece of land and be able to grow more food and rear animals to feed me, my wife and my three children.
In the meantime, I want to experiment with my rear garden in London, creating a lovely family space while getting my kids excited about growing and eating food straight from the garden. Having grown up in the countryside myself I want my children to have some of the same experiences I did; forking up potatoes, picking lettuce and shelling broad beans around the kitchen table; to have an understanding of the joys of food fresh from the garden. But at the same time, I don’t want to lose the aesthetics of my garden, nor lose the lawn for the kids.We will have to grow edibles around the existing structures, removing some of the perennial flowers but retaining enough to still attract wildlife.
I, like many others in this fast moving city, don’t have the time to grow from seed so have chosen to order plugs to plant out immediately in my garden. I don’t expect to get it entirely right this year; it will no doubt be a work in progress, evolving as I learn what works where and with what, season by season, year by year.
I’ll keep you posted on how things grow, and the recipes that I will be experimenting with along the way.