Plans for our Small Cottage Garden for 2023

The arrival of the gardening season fills my heart with joy! While I still consider myself a novice , it’s true to say that I’ve come a long way in the last few years. I started gardening in 2019, with just a few pots on our little patio . Each year I’ve tried a handful of new plants and varieties, learning from the mistakes of the previous year and going easy on myself when I don’t quite get things right.

As we approach Spring, I can't wait to get started on my gardening journey. There are so many possibilities out there, and I'm always excited to try growing new varieties. This season, I plan on experimenting with a few plants that I've never grown before, as well as tending to some of my old favourites, like sweet peas, lavender, and lettuce.

Let me share with you my humble garden plans for 2023.

An Overview of our Garden

Let me paint you a picture of our garden. The garden is really two gardens - a lawn at the front with a small bed and some pots, and a larger back garden with a little more growing space. The back garden is around 50sqm (that’s about 150 square feet) so it’s not huge, but still enough for us to grow a modest amount of vegetables, herbs and flowers.

The garden is west facing, so while the garden isn’t bright for the whole day, it does see the sun from late morning right until sundown. However, rather unfortunately, there are two large trees that throw the bottom end of the garden into shade for a large part of the afternoon. Our house is a rental so we can’t make huge changes, but last year we added two small raised beds in the middle of the garden, which considerably increased the amount of growing space we have.

Lessons from Last Year

Gardening is a journey of continuous learning, of mistakes made and lessons learnt. Here are a few from last year.

Don’t grow things you won’t eat

Every year there seems to be something that produces so abundantly that we grow tired of eating it. In my first year of gardening I grew so much sorrel we were fed up of it by July, and last year the glorious May weather meant we were eating peas morning, noon and night.

While sometimes the things that succeed are out of your control, I’ve learnt to be realistic about what we actually will eat. This is all the more true when you have little ones - no matter how much I love courgettes, we just don’t eat enough because my toddlers can’t stand them!

Sometimes you can’t work out why things fail

Last year I just couldn’t find a way to get chamomile seeds to germinate. I tried it so many different ways and each time there was nothing. In the end, I decided it was something that would remain a mystery, and went in search of wild chamomile instead. The conditions for a plant to grow well are myriad and sometimes it can be difficult (and frustrating) trying

Peat-free compost is absolutely fine

Some seasoned gardeners seem to be very cross with anyone who suggests that peat free compost is an adequate replacement for it’s peat-laden cousin. I have always tried to use peat-free compost for environmental reasons but once or twice have bought peat compost because an alternative wasn’t available. Of course, I’m no expert, but I really haven’t noticed much difference in success when using peat-free compost. We do also make our own compost, which is obviously peat-free and is a wonderful environmentally friendly way to use some of our food waste.

Our humble garden space
in the middle of Winter

Hopes for This Year

So much of gardening is unexpected, and I feel it’s wise to hold plans lightly, but here are some of the things I hope to see in our garden this coming season.

more herbs for drying

This year I’ve forayed into making more botanical skin care and teas, and I hope to grow some ingredients for those in our garden. I’ve already mentioned chamomile, my absolute favourite herbal tea. Alongside in our apothecary garden I hope to see calendula, lavender and roses for drying and storing.

More cut flowers

There is something quite special about growing flowers. The first time one of my dahlia plants flowered, I kept returning to stare it, amazed that I’d helped to grow such a beautiful thing. This year, I’ll continue to grow more of my favourites - five varieties of sweet pea, a handful of cosmos, dahlias and zinnias.

There will also be plenty of flowers that aren’t for cutting but I hope will add glorious colour to the garden - hollyhocks, foxgloves, poppies and a whole handful of wildflowers.

More in the polytunnel

Just a stone’s throw from our garden is a communal polytunnel which is seldom used by our neighbours. Last year we used it to house seedlings and then later it became home to two small but perfectly formed watermelons. We never imagined the plants would be pollinated, let alone fruited! This year we hope we’ll continue our success with watermelons and are trying an early variety that promises to do well in the British climate.

I’m also excited to return to growing tomatoes by trying a few heirloom varieties for the first time. I didn’t grow tomatoes last year because the children won’t touch them, but I’ve decided I like them enough that I’ll be able to eat all of them!

My Gardening Favourites

If, like me, you prefer an environmentally friendly style of gardening, here are a few of my favourites:

Melcourt Sylvagrow Peat Free Compost - The best peat-free compost I’ve tried and definitely worth the price.

Real Seeds - My favourite place to buy organic, open-pollinated vegetable seeds. At first I didn’t realise that many of the seeds you buy in garden centres are hybrid seeds that are often sterile. This means you can’t save the seed for the following year. Real Seeds sell high quality seed, often from heirloom varieties, that you can use to reproduce seed year after year.

Vital Seeds - Another great organic seed supplier, for vegetables, herbs and flowers.

Grace Alexander Flowers - Grace harvests all her seed from her own garden and they are both excellent quality and come in the most beautiful packaging. Although her name suggests she only offers flowers, she also carries seed for some gorgeous heirloom vegetables. Her curation of colour and quality is exceptional and I find her website an incredible source of inspiration for my garden. Note, however, that you need to sign up to Grace’s monthly subscription ‘Gather’ to access her seed shop. In my opinion it’s worth signing up for a month just to buy your seeds, and you can cancel right after if the membership isn’t for you.

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