Mark Rendell Garden Design Consultancy

Home
United Kingdom
Porthmadog
Mark Rendell Garden Design Consultancy

Professional garden design and gardening services

30/03/2022

Excited to announce that Debbie Carroll, my former colleague at Step Change Design, and I have launched our new Handbook for Designers working with care settings. The Handbook is packed with insights from our ground-breaking research project and introduces the Designer to our culture-change approach to working with care settings that we call Relationship-Centred Design (RCD). For further information, click on this link: https://stepchange-design.co.uk/shop/designer-focused-handbook/
or get in touch with Debbie at Step Change Design or me if you have any questions or comments!

18/12/2021

The winter 'shift' in the garden is now officially underway. My Algerian iris (Iris unguicularis) started flowering on December 10th, the earliest in several years! Highly recommend this easy to grow, colourful and slightly scented rhizomatous plant

01/11/2020

Good time to outdoor-sow and plant spring / early summer crops like garlic, onions and broad beans. You'll save up to 4 weeks by doing this now. I'll put a cloche over the beans when it gets colder as they are quite a tender crop for this elevation.

13/10/2020

My Buddleja x weyeriana 'Sungold' (Yellow Butterfly Bush) is flowering again. It reminded me that if you are looking to include unusual specimens in your garden then why not look for the more dainty 'cousins' of our ordinary and well-known varieties? This is a good example: you'll have the surprise factor ("Oh I didn't know you can get a yellow Buddleja?!") and you have the toughness and hardiness of the family in general along with its exotic or rarity value - always a great talking point!

07/10/2020

Welcome to my walipini! Two years ago, I built a large, partially sunken greenhouse against one of my stone buildings. There was a slope which naturally lent itself to the concept of a split level, large scale, under-cover growing area. The concept derives from high altitude areas (Walipini means 'place of warmth' in Bolivian Aymara language) where cold air is drawn down and away from tender plants into a cold sink and then expelled under gravity away from the building. In this case, the corridor is 3ft below the growing areas and the air is drawn under the deck flooring and out under the door. At 600ft / 180m above sea level, this building helps extend not just my growing season but also the range of vegetables and fruit I can easily grow here. Inside, there is a sweet white grape vine and an espalier trained Peach along with a lemon tree. In other parts are squashes, tomatoes, an avocado tree, peppers and a Bird of Paradise plant. It's a great place to potter and somewhere cosy to work in when the elements are throwing everything at the hillside!

04/10/2020

Have you ever grown potatoes vertically? I tried this approach this year by creating a 'potato tower' in the veg garden. I took a coil of pig wire (large square shaped holes), fixed it into a cylinder shape 4ft / 120cm high and 2ft / 60cm diameter. I lined the pig wire with haylage and then filled the centre with layers of a soil / compost mix and four rings of chitted potatoes, sprouting eyes pointing out towards the edge. Second earlies were in the top two rings, main crop potatoes in the lower two rings. Did the experiment work? Pluses: took up much less room in the veg patch, less pest damage, no need to rake up the soil as the haulms grew. Minuses: lower crop yield than expected, wasn't convinced about watering the top of the tower (would the lower rings of potatoes get sufficient water?). All in all, I would do this again as it was a space-efficient approach that freed up valuable growing areas in the veg patch. One change I would make is to include a pipe down the centre of the tower with drilled holes to ensure that water reaches the lowest parts of the tower.

27/09/2020

I've been carrying out some experiments in the garden this year and will share the results with you over forthcoming posts. The first one I tried was growing tomatoes upside down. I wanted to see if it would affect the yield and also what effects this would have on their growth habits and disease resistance. If it worked then this is how I would grow them next year - up out of the way, freeing the growing areas in the borders of my walipini. I think it worked well. The plant I experimented on responded to the strange growing situation well and produced two good trusses of healthy fruit. There also seemed enough growing medium in the re-purposed hanging plastic container. The only downside was the need to water very regularly (once a day) as the soil dries out quickly. The other thing I noted was the length of the plant so I will need to suspend it from the highest part of the walipini (which then means I need to install an irrigation system!). Will all this be worth it? Yes absolutely. I love tomatoes and this arrangement will mean more room to grow more crops in the soil under the hanging toms!

23/06/2020

Rosebay Willowherb (Chamaenerion angustifolium) is a familiar w**d in my garden and this year I have deployed an unorthdox method to keep it under control - I am drinking it. To be more precise, I made tea out of it. Believe it or not, this tea was Russia's main export for a while and consequently got the name, Russian Tea, Ivan Chai or Warrior Tea for its fortifying qualities and place of origin. It is very easy to make and tastes sweet and delicious. Here's what you do: pick a bunch of stems and let them wilt in a shady area for around 24 hours, then strip the leaves and flowers into a ceramic bowl, scrunch them to release the enzymes and polyphenols and cover the bowl with a damp tea towel. You want the smell to change from grass to a sort of toffee apple, usually 24 hours, perhaps a little longer. At this stage, spread the material out onto baking trays and dry in the oven at about 80C. Then place the tea leaves into a storage jar. Enjoy!

30/05/2020

How long are seeds viable for? Or in other words, is the 'best sown before' date reliable? To try to answer these questions, I did a little experiment earlier this month. I have loads of 'old ' packets of seeds here and so I decided to sow a 1998 packet of Capsicum (Bell Pepper). And guess what.... 22 years after these seeds were collected from the mother plant, some have germinated!

03/11/2019

Have had my own Halloween visitation here: 'Witches Butter'! Two patches of this slimy micro-organism have appeared seemingly out of nowhere in my parking area. Other names for this are Star Jelly, Star Slime, Rain P**p and Mare's Eggs but it also goes by the proper name of Nostoc. I have looked all around my garden and my neighbourhood and I haven't seen any deposits anywhere else so maybe there is some truth that it falls from the sky after a shooting star has passed?!

Address

Porthmadog
LL519UQ

Telephone

+447780920653

Website

http://www.thegrowingcompany.co.uk/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Mark Rendell Garden Design Consultancy posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Business

Send a message to Mark Rendell Garden Design Consultancy:

Shortcuts

Want your business to be the top-listed Home Improvement Business in Porthmadog?