Triangle Community Garden

If, like me, you are starting to think about Christmas through a haze of concern for our world, then it makes sense to buy gifts which support charities and companies that offer ethical and environmentally sound products. If you are buying for a fellow gardener or nature lover this year, here are some presents which could help you create a greener Christmas for friends and family…

1. Send a British Bouquet

Visit the Flowers From The Farm website (a not-for-profit network run by volunteers to support local UK flower growers) to find your local suppliers. I found our local flower farm on the website – The Baldock Flower Farm – a family run business selling local Hertfordshire flowers. A December bouquet with holly, mistletoe, festive flowers and foliage is sure to brighten even the dullest Christmas Day.

The website also has a area which lists flower events and workshops around the country. What better present for a flower-lover than the opportunity to learn more about growing their own cutting patch or creating a hand-tied bouquet?

2. The Gift of Inspiration

Books are fabulous gifts for all ages and can be revisited time and time again (although having spent 12 years as a English teacher I’m probably a bit biased!) My top pick for family gardeners this year would be the RHS Plants for Pips which my kids really enjoyed (I’ve reviewed it on the blog here). For ‘grow your own’ enthusiasts and those interested in environmental friendly gardening practices, I’d suggest Creating A Forest Garden by Martin Crawford. I’ve got it on loan from a friend at the moment, but it’s so good, I’ve requested my own copy for Christmas. It’s a comprehensive hardback with lots of information on how and why to set up a forest garden.

If Creating A Forest Garden is a little too detailed or pricey, I’ve also borrowed the paperbacks How To Grow Perennial Vegetables and Food From Your Forest Garden (also by Martin Crawford). Both are full of fascinating information about how to grow, harvest and use unusual plants. I particularly liked the photography in Food From Your Forest Garden and I can’t wait to try some of the inspiring recipes like ‘Iceplant with Peanuts and Coconut’. These, and many other environmental books, can be purchased online from Green Books – a publishing company which was launched in 1986 to help spread Green ideas and practices.

I’ve been indulging in a bit of botanical hygge with these inspiring books…

3. Donate to Others

Give a charity gardening donation such as planting an allotment with Oxfam to help others through gardening. Another gift which supports poor communities is Present Aid’s (Christian Aid’s charity gift shop) Floating Garden which provides seeds and training to families in Bangladesh to help them create floating gardens which can withstand the regular flooding which affects the country. This gift also makes a contribution to Christian Aid’s Climate Change Fund.

4. Feed the Birds

Birds are one of nature’s pest control mechanisms – eating snails, caterpillars and cabbage white butterflies. Giving the gift of a bird feeder, bird food, a nest box or a bird bath will help support the UK’s bird populations and reduce the need for chemical pest control in the garden. These days the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds recommends feeding birds throughout the year, rather than just in the winter, so that birds have a better chance of surviving food shortages whenever they may occur. Bird food and feeders are readily available in shops and online, but the RSPB’s online shop offers a good selection and supports their work protecting birds and habitats throughout the UK.

This Song Thrush is one of nature’s own pest controllers

5. Grow Your Own Festive Fungi

With the Espresso Mushroom Kitchen Garden from The Espresso Mushroom Company, you can give an edible gift to be grown on the biodegradable, recycled coffee grounds of one hundred espressos. This small Brighton based company aims to change people’s perception of ‘waste’ and demonstrate how it can be a useful resource. Three gifts in one: the Oyster mushrooms are fun to grow, they can be used a couple of weeks later to lift any Christmas leftovers to another level and the process creates a high grade, mushroom-enriched soil enhancer compost.

6. Go Perennial

Give a gift of perennial seeds, plants or tubers. Choosing some perennial fruit and vegetables in place of annual crops helps to reduce the impact of growing plants anew each year, with the associated energy costs of heating, compost and pots. I’m planning a perennial bed in the allotment next year (to add to the raspberries, Jerusalem artichokes, rhubarb, currants, strawberries and oca we already grow.) This will hopefully include crops such as Welsh onion, perennial kale, sea beet, yacon, wasabi, hardy ginger and ulluco to broaden our perennial range. Pennard Plants, Backyard Larder, Agroforestry Research Trust (set up and run by Martin Crawford) and Incredible Vegetables all have a good range of perennial plants and informative websites.

Jerusalem artichokes, Oca and Sea kale

7. Organise a Peat-Free Compost Delivery

We all know that using peat in compost is the antithesis to environmentally friendly gardening, but good peat-free compost can be hard to source at times. A delivery of compost, perhaps with a peat-free seed compost (something I find impossible to get locally) would be a great gift to start a year of green gardening. Suppliers of good quality peat-free compost include Dalefoot Composts (I’ve used their wool based composts for the past couple of years and been impressed with the quality), Carbon Gold Biochar Composts and SylvaGrow Composts (you can find your nearest stockist here or order online from garden stores such as Vale Gardens).

8. Book a Course at a Local Community Garden

There are hundreds of community growing spaces around the UK and many run short courses, like this one at my local community garden (the Triangle Community Garden in Hitchin) on growing fruit in the garden. Buying a course place as a gift is an ideal present as it leads to an accumulation of knowledge rather than ‘stuff’. Courses like these are great fun – not only do they encourage people to visit and get involved in local gardening initiatives, but they also support the community work as well. If you would like to find your nearest community garden, useful websites are The Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens, the RHS Communities, the BBC Community Gardening Projects and Garden Organic’s Local Groups and Gardens.

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One of our popular ‘Grow Your Own’ workshops

9. Wind Up/Solar Gifts

A wind-up radio will create some Christmas cheer in the potting shed without using any extra energy. This wind-up, solar charged radio from the Natural Collection can be charged by the sun, by rechargeable batteries or with good old elbow grease. Or brighten up the winter garden with solar lighting from Lights4Fun (a family run business based in Harrogate whose good quality solar lights all have removable and replaceable batteries so a battery failing doesn’t necessitate throwing away the whole unit). I can’t resist a few fairy lights in the garden and find there is enough sun, even in winter, to power lights for some of the evening and create a sparkly Christmas atmosphere.

10. Give the Gift of Time

Give time rather than money by writing an original nature poem, framing a beautiful garden photograph or making a voucher for a couple of hours helping on a friend’s allotment. Christmas should be about spending time with those we love and a little time spent creating a bespoke gift adds a personal sparkle to Christmas Day.

Daddy’s Christmas poem written by my 7 year old with pictures coloured by my 4 year old

Most of the ideas and recommendations in this post are based on products or companies which have impressed me in the past when I’ve used them. The few which I’ve not tried myself have either been recommended by people whom I trust or have been internet finds (the only ones in this latter category are Green Books, Espresso Mushroom Company and Incredible Vegetables) where the online literature has impressed me and made me want to try their products myself. I hope you’ve found the ideas helpful – now I’m off to buy a few for my gardening friends this Christmas.

What green Christmas presents have you enjoyed receiving? What gardening books would you recommend for others this Christmas? Do leave a comment below and share your ideas with other readers – thanks 🙂

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My Free-From Life…

Ever since I can remember I’ve wanted to be up at dawn, exploring the natural world at its most active, listening to the dawn chorus and engaging with the day in its infancy. In reality most mornings I struggled to rise for work, or in the early days of motherhood, to soothe night-time toddler traumas. And much as I loved interacting with my kids, games, for me, were generally conducted from the sofa rather than the floor.

Then five years ago I was diagnosed with coeliac disease, like my father five years previously and slowly I began to understand the reasons why my expectations so far exceeded my abilities. I was tested because of my family history and registered positive in both the blood test and a biopsy. Initially we thought I was asymptomatic, but after a year on a gluten-free diet I realised other people didn’t try harder than me to get out of bed in the morning – they just had more energy than I did. My general health and energy levels, which I’d never thought of questioning, improved rapidly.

Over the past five years I’ve rearranged my life around new rules. I generally choose not to eat out as I’m extremely sensitive to gluten and have had a couple of bad experiences in the past, so as a full-time mum I turned to my house and garden, to growing, harvesting and cooking my own food as a way of regaining control of my life. Using my gradually developing energies, I learned to create the kind of food I feared I’d be missing now eating out was off the menu.

Initially I used the garden to provide ingredients for my cooking, but it quickly became something greater, an inspiration, an education and a growing passion. My garden became a haven, somewhere I felt comfortable, but also somewhere I was finally able to develop my relationship with the natural world. I started laying the first border into the grass at a stage where I could only manage an hour’s digging before retreating to bed, then laid paths, developed flower borders, nature areas and set up a productive, although small, fruit cage and three vegetable beds. As a family space, the garden gives us a base for finding essential oddments for craft activities, gardening with the children (as I write, they have a thriving bed filled with carrots, oca and enthusiastic nasturtiums) and a willow den, which my father and I built using willow whips, and which now can entirely absorb passing small children into its frondy interior in summer games of hide-and-seek.

Produce from the garden has been an inspiration in my cooking. As I’ve begun to master gluten-free cakes, biscuits and a variety of different pastries, the garden has provided. It has offered vegetables for Cornish pasties, raspberries and alpine strawberries for adding magic to cupcakes with the kids and baskets of fruit which my husband carefully transforms into jellies, jams and chutneys to see us through the winter. As my confidence in gluten-free cooking has grown, I have begun to create more ambitious foods. Birthdays now always mean a big gluten-free cake – anything from rainbow cakes to flower garden cakes and even an entirely gluten-free gingerbread house! Most normal recipes need a little alteration, but we think my cakes and biscuits are generally pretty similar to gluten alternatives.

Bread is the latest challenge – one of our New Year’s resolutions for 2016. Soda bread has been very successful, especially when eaten on the day it’s made – with a homemade soup based on seasonal vegetables from the garden. My first focaccia attempt would have been extremely useful as a building material, but had little culinary merit. Since then I’ve experimented with different flours, psyllium husks and flax seeds. The results are slowly improving and I’m hopeful that a soft, tasty loaf with plenty of added fibre is just around the corner. Perfect to spread with home-grown jam or to make into a cheese and mayonnaise sandwich, with salad freshly picked from the garden.

I no longer feel the need to rise at dawn because I now engage with the world in a more immediate way. I’m out there, doing what I love, greeting the days with renewed energy, grateful for my new life and my good health.

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If you’d like to get involved with volunteering in your local area there are many community gardens throughout the UK. The BBC has a list of local gardening projects, the RHS runs the Britain in Bloom and It’s your Neighbourhood projects which offer local volunteering opportunities and the social and therapeutic gardening charity Thrive also has four community gardens around the country supported by local volunteers.

With thanks to my friends and family for their support and to all the garden volunteers who give so much and make so much of a difference.