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Welcome to

Gardening with

Graham

First of all a brief introduction and why I have created this web site. I am Graham, I have been gardening all my life. I first got introduced to gardening by my Grandad and Uncle Bill. When I was a child we lived in a terraced house with a tiny garden (only a few square feet). This was not a garden to inspire anyone, it was really just a small playground, from what I can remember of it there was one shrub, a Forsythia and the rest lawn. On a weekend we would often visit my grandparents and I found there garden fascinating. It was looked after by my Grandad and my Uncle Bill who still lived with them at the time. They only had what I would now class as a small town garden but they grew lots flowers, some vegetables and had a greenhouse. This was all I needed to get hooked on gardening. When we moved out of the terraced house (I was about 13) My dad gave me the front garden to do with what I wanted and in the back garden we started to grow vegetables. This was a new build house with very heavy clay soil and very little top soil. These early years in my gardening adventure did teach me quite a lot and always encouraged with my gardening by my parents. When I left school, I did an apprenticeship with my local council in horticulture. During this period, I gained a lot of experience with plants but I felt the pay was not sufficient so decided to try starting up on my own. It was only then that I realised the training with the council only took me so far. From here I started to work for a private landscaping company. Luckily for me the company I worked for were very experienced and skilled in Landscaping. I went on to learn a lot more about landscaping a garden and to learn the skills involved to install paving, build walls, build ponds, add drainage etc. I also learnt a lot more about the business side of things. I went on to run my own business but after years finding it hard to find reliable staff and finally breaking an ankle I decided to leave gardening as a job and went into computers (which had been a long time hobby). During this period, I never lost my love of gardening or of gardens and I have always been gardening at home for friends/family or on an allotment. So why have I created this web site - well, in 2021, after having both my hips replaced just six months earlier, I was offered an allotment not too far from where I live. I was offered the choice of either a half plot that was reasonably clear or a full plot that was extremely overgrown and in a complete mess. I decided to go for the full plot. The allotment committee offered to cut the trees down before I started to use the plot but I said that I would do it. With my experience I knew the tree stumps would be a real problem, instead I removed the trees at thee roots (over fifty of them, several with trunks over a foot thick). After clearing the plot, I decided to work it using the no dig method, which I had tried briefly at home. The roots were the main reason for me choosing this method. Anyway, to cut a long story short my plot vastly changed and became what has been referred to by many as a model plot. After a few months a lady took a half plot next to ours. She was so impressed and often said we should be on Gardeners World (something lots of people have said) and she persuaded me to start posting on Instagram. After a while I found Instagram to be quite frustrating with its limitations so that was when I decided to start this web site. The site is here to offer help and advice for anyone who would like it. I will try to add things regularly to this site but it will be when I have the time, I cannot make this a full time job. Here are a few videos that I have recently uploaded to YouTube I hope you do enjoy this site and find some of the information useful. Please feel free to contact me or to send me any suggestions for the site or any errors if you spot them (English was never my strong point, so sorry for all the spelling and grammatical errors). Enjoy your gardening :)