Pick up the garden fork and now breathe…

The sun’s out again and it’s 27°C and very dry in the garden this afternoon.

Last week we heard Christine Walkden on Gardener’s Question Time who said she likes to give her garden a good water with just a watering can and it can take her up to 2 hours at a time.

Since ditching the hose after watching a great special about conserving water on Gardener’s World a while ago it now takes us quite a while too just using a watering can without a rose on the top. We enjoy the slow ritual, the endless walks back and forth to the tap, making sure the soil gets a good soaking. We probably wouldn’t like it that way if we were going to catch a train but it’s a nice thing to do on an early morning on a day off work or in the later evening after a day of toil.

Is there such a thing as “meditative gardening”? There was a lot of staring into space with one foot on a garden fork when we worked at the council so it may have been around for years.

Talking of meditative gardening, there’s a great horticultural themed set from Monster Rally (we have a feeling that someone may have mentioned this to us before, our mates Gerry Hectic, DJ Frederick or Justin Patrick Moore perhaps?) called Botanica Dream. It’s full of some lovely downtempo business and at the moment the track above is our favourite but they’re all excellent.

And here’s a promo from the Skybird Council Gardeners Association for The Scented Garden radio show for you all to enjoy.

And an episode of The Scented Garden from earlier this year for your gardening/listening pleasure. Tune in, turn on and sit yourself in the middle of a flower bed preferably and enjoy the flowers.

Seed saving and other stories

Cheers to our good friend Marc B for letting us know about a feature which was up our street on BBC’s Gardeners’ World this week about a “seed guardian” in Wales called Adam Alexander.  It’s excellent stuff to watch and it’s on i-player here episode 22 at about 25 minutes in. Have a look at Adam’s blog too (here) as he’s an interesting chap to say the least and has loads of advice on growing stuff, collecting seed and a lot more!

Talking of saving seeds and the like here’s news via @freedomseedbank of a great free event at the Skip Garden Harvest Festival on September 22nd at the Skip Garden, 1 Tapper Walk, London N1C 4AQ which includes a seed saving workshop explaining amongst other things “the theory and practice of saving seeds” which sounds great stuff. For more information and to book pop to their eventbrite page here.#saveyourownseeds