An evening with Bob Flowerdew


Heron
Bob’s fish are safe from herons

At this time of year the Oxford Botanic Garden runs its Winter Lecture Series. In previous years I have been to see Ken Thompson and Jekka McVicar. I’m signed up for two of this year’s series, and went to see Bob Flowerdew yesterday evening.

Bob is well-known for being a devout organic gardener, and for attempting to grow all kinds of unusual things, so I was hoping he would be the mad-cap version of himself rather than the slightly watered-down version he often is in the mainstream press.

He spent the first few minutes on his organic soapbox, which was a bit dull for anyone already converted; had he not done so he may not have overrun, but it didn’t really matter.

Bob is a big fan of using grass clippings as a mulch, since they’re free and you’d have to dispose of them in some manner anyway. He also uses raised beds that are more like mounds – they have no sides, since the materials we use to make sides have to be bought, and have a tendency to harbour pests anyway. Mind you, he has the space to make it work, which is a luxury many of us garden without.

He made a good point about green manures – although he’s a big fan of using green manures to add fertility and protect the soil structure over winter, most common green manures are the ones that farmers use. And while they’re easy to plough in with a tractor, some of them can be quite hard work in the vegetable patch. So instead of common green manures he uses the poached egg plant (Limnanthes douglasii), of which he is a great fan – as you will know if you’ve read any of his books), claytonia and corn salad. The latter two provide edible greens and fodder to his chickens. All three are much easier to kill off and dig in, making them more suitable for garden use.

He reminds us to make good use of our microclimates. Many of the common vegetables and fruits are marginal in our climate (especially further north in the UK) and will benefit from being grown in the warmer sections of the garden. Growing plants on ridges angled towards the sun can make them feel much more at home as they’ll catch more rays and be warmer. And small fields (and hence gardens) can be several degrees warmer when surrounded by a hedge as it acts as a windbreak.

You can create artificial microclimates in your garden. Bob uses semi-circular walls of used tyres as a heat sink behind his peach tree. It absorbs heat during the day and lets it out at night, and yields can be up to 5 times higher. He says he’s never had any problems with chemical run-off from the tyres (and he uses a lot of them in his garden).

Log piles around your garden pond will provide homes for beneficial wildlife and also prevent herons from landing and wading into the pond to eat your fish – apparently they don’t like landing directly on the water.

Bob doesn’t recommend that novice gardeners get caught up in companion planting as it can be a difficult technique to master, but he does like growing scented flowers in his garden. He has a thornless rose (he was speaking too fast for me to catch which one, but I will see if it’s mentioned in his books) with a lovely scent and eats the petals in his salads. He loves night-scented stocks and the treacleberry (Smilacena racemosa) which has lovely scented flowers followed by edible fruit.

He mentioned another flowering plant that had a lovely scent in the evening, a South African annual with a name beginning with Z that I didn’t quite catch – which is not surprising as it turns out to be Zaluzianskya capensis, the Night Phlox.

Oh, and he’s very fond of strawberries. Bob says grow more strawberries, you can never have enough of them.

According to the lady who introduced Bob, the Oxford Botanic Garden has been developing a large collection of edible plants (vegetables, fruit and herbs), so I will have to pop along later in the year and see what has changed since I was there for FoGroBloMe ’08.

Posted 29 January 2010, 11:12.   Posted in .

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