This is where we share stories about gardening, goats, climate action and hints and tricks to help everyone live the good life! Search our extensive archive, use the categories below or simply have a relaxing browse with a cuppa…
A beautiful photo story of an urban home Jane Hilliard from Designful and I (Hannah) designed together and that’s just been finished! But first a little “before” photo. The site was 97% grass with an old double car garage (which was replaced with the small house), a few raised garden beds growing rosemary and weeds, one […]
Tagasaste or tree lucerne (Cytisus proliferus), is a small evergreen tree that grows 3-6m high (depending on soil and rain) and is a popular plant for people looking to regenerate poor soils and feed livestock. It’s indigenous to the dry volcanic slopes of the Canary Islands and was introduced to Australia some time around 1879 when […]
Recently, we built a much anticipated, beautiful bit of infrastructure for our garden – a cold frame. This is a welcome addition to any cool temperate garden, where we’re all constantly working on creating warm microclimates to extend our season to get tomatoes earlier and longer, reliable eggplants and abundant basil. Cold frames can be […]
We’ve been using beeswax wraps for quite a while now and like them so much we decided to start making our own. We’ve tried two approaches, the first just 100% beeswax from our beehives and the second with beeswax, pine resin and olive oil. The wax and resin makes a better wrap, albeit with a […]
If you’ve got unwanted rodents living in your compost bin a simple and effective way of keeping them out is by adding vermin mesh onto the bottom of it. Vermin mesh (aka rodent mesh) is made from thick wire (around 2mm) and has small squares that baby rodents can’t squeeze through. While it does start […]
At our recent Real SKills for Growing Food workshop at Fat Pig Farm, Nadia (their head market gardener) joined our teaching team and gave us all a tour of three worm farms for tiny, medium and large gardens. While we currently haven’t got a worm farm set up at our own place (we will soon), […]
In mid 2016 we bought the neighbouring patch of weedy/bush land we’d been drooling over for 4 years; and at the beginning of 2017, we started shaping it to include a driveway and more garden/animal space. We’d been drooling over this steep landscape as up until early 2017 the only way into our property was […]
We recently visited a house with the most beautiful wheelie bin compost toilet. It’s designed to be inside the house, is smell-free, beautiful (in my opinion) and super easy to use. All the good things. The wheelie bin’s hidden with a timber framework that opens up so you can roll the bin out when needed. Making […]
We’re gradually adding a range of permaculture design case studies to our website so you can have a little look at what landscape design can look like in drastically different contexts. Fat Pig Farm You might know Fat Pig Farm through Matthew Evans and his TV show, The Gourmet Farmer. As well as being a […]
Citrus (oranges in particular) grow in winter so we have *plenty* of them around at the moment. Once you realise that you can use citrus skins as fire starters this is actually highly convenient as winter is also when we’re cold – and lighting lots of fires. Good dots to join as composting large amounts, […]