Four rhubarbs and a recipe for homemade rhubarb gin

~ Homemade pink gin ... perfect for summer! ~

Good ideas from the allotments

Vintage, cobbled together, upcycled or just plain eccentric -there's lots to inspire on an English allotment!

And so into June

It's two steps forward and one back as we head into June in the veg patch gardens.  Last week my area of London saw thunderstorms most evenings with some very dramatic forked lightning. One evening a huge dark cloud with sheet lightning flickering across it loomed in an otherwise clear sky - very ominous, I can tell you!  These storms were usually followed by torrential downpours and, oh, how the slugs loved it.

An unexpected historic herb garden in Southwark

At the end of last week I visited Borough Market near London Bridge to hear a talk on planting for urban bees as part of the Chelsea Fringe Festival. Southwark Cathedral is next to the world famous market and I'd read on the London Open Squares website that there's a herb garden in the churchyard. It's sited on the 14th century foundations of the original Priory chapel and planted with herbs that the Augustinian Canons would have used for cooking, strewing and brewing, or medicinally in the nearby 12th Century St. Thomas' hospital (named for Thomas Beckett, now the Herb Garrett Museum).