Beans & Blossoms

29/06/2025

Still a work in progress but it's good to look back and see where you started.

This is our own garden, previously a section full of old plumbing and pipes, damp and difficult to mow. With a small budget, a lot of careful plant selection, even more careful digging, and a couple years for the bare root plants to fill out the space it's finally starting to look a little like it did in my head at the beginning 💚

15/06/2025

This is a project I'm running with my day job at Marr Area Partnership 💚 Please reach out if you'd like to participate and do share with any gardening groups or allotments you might be part of if you live in the Marr area 🙌🏼

The Marr Community Food network currently includes 25 community food initiatives in the Marr area, all of which are small, volunteer led organisations operating essential access points in their communities. 🏘️

To help support them, and increase the availability of healthy produce in our communities this summer we're aiming to GROW together with the Marr Garden Network. 🥬

The Marr Garden Network aims to link kitchen gardeners and allotmenteers to their nearest community food initiative to turn their excess produce into a community resource. ♻️

How can you get involved? If you're a keen gardener and find yourself up to your ears in courgettes, tired of tomatoes, or overwhelmed by a glut of any type of produce this season please get in touch with [email protected] for the details of your nearest participating community food initiative 💚

If you're not a gardener yourself, you can still make a big difference by sharing the details with your friends, neighbours, and networks 🌟

20/04/2025

Hope everyone is having a brilliant holiday weekend ✨

I haven't given much of an update this year but there have been a lot of changes.

In January I started a new role with Marr Area Partnership as the Food Plan Development Coordinator for Marr area of Aberdeenshire. This means I won't have much time for growing plants outside our own garden needs but I may still have some locally grown spares for sale throughout the year. It also means I can find ways to support groups supplying locally grown plants and produce to link with food access networks throughout Marr through that role in a larger network rather than on a smaller scale myself with Beans & Blossoms which for me is very exciting and at the core of why I love kitchen gardening.

I'll still be doing some small odd jobs for clients in their own gardens so you may see some posts of those here. I'll also keep sharing some things from our own garden and on the odd occasion if we have anything for sale I'll post that too.

Mostly I'll be having a quiet year and rediscovering the parts of gardening that bring my family joy and taking a step back from the parts that were just adding stress.

Wishing everyone an excellent season ahead 🌿🌷

15/04/2025

A favourite ✨

12/03/2025

I've been out of commission for a few months with a shoulder injury but I took advantage of the fine weather last weekend to fit in a quick two hour tidy up for a lovely new client. The focus on the first visit was clearing up near the drive and getting a large potted pieris in the ground. A few before and afters for anyone needing a bit of inspiration this is the difference a couple hours and some sunshine can make ☀️

29/10/2024

Yesterday I wrapped up a project for the season that I've been working on in stages since August. It was excellent to see it all come together.

Here you can see some before and after shots of two sections of the garden which is a capsule of the larger project.

In the walled corner I mainly focused on ground clearance. We found very large old stone feature which had been covered over with roots and soil so that was uncovered and restored as a point of interest.

Nearer to the house were two formal beds which had been taken over with self seeding plants and ground elder.

Any plants worth saving were moved to other parts of the garden aside from shrubs and trees.

Due to the amount of ground elder it was decided the best option would be to introduce w**d control fabric and lay the area with bark chips to create a low maintenance flower bed.

Some roses were added from other locations in the garden as well as some new feature plants chosen by the client that will add winter interest and won't self seed.

If you need help with:

Ground clearance

Plant identification

Relocating plants

Planning a new layout

Or other aspects in your own garden please get in touch for an initial chat 🌿