There was a heavy heavy snow fall during the night – heavy in depth of snow and heavy in that the snow itself is wet and branches were bent down to the ground including this hazel growing next to the pathway into the house. Bringing the branches down to ground level I was astonished to see that it was completely covered in male catkins in bud, each of which will have around 250 flowers which will emerge as soon as it gets milder in a few weeks! …and a few more pictures of the garden this morning:
10 years ago today I had my first celebrity visit, from the UK! On 10th April 2010 I received the following email message entitled Permaveggies: “I am a garden writer based in Birmingham, England. I came across your work via an interview with you on a website and am very interested in learning more about your garden. I also share a love for unusual edibles that can be used in an ‘ornamental setting’. I suppose my garden has one foot in the forest garden camp and the other in a cottage garden. The greatest majority are edibles (everything from your typical vegetables to the more unusuals) with the rest being useful plants for medicine, feeding the garden or pollinators. I suppose the interesting part is that it’s a typical row terrace garden that’s about 60 ft long- cramped in is one way of looking at its design principles. I’ve written a book about it called the Edible Garden with it in conjunction with a programme on BBC2. Anyhow I would love to talk more about your work and what you’ve discovered. I look forward to hearing from you. Yours sincerely Alys Fowler” The interview was the one published on my friend Telsing Andrews’ blog, The Veggie Patch Reimagined (see https://veggiepatchreimagined.blogspot.com/2010/02/stephens-edimental-oasis-interview.html). As part of this BBC series, permaculture had just been featured on 7th April 2010. The BBC crew visited Tim and Maddy Harland’s (my publishers) garden and were bowled over by their mature forest garden full of food and wildlife. In my reply I jokingly wrote “Stop by next time you’re in the area”! Little did I know that she would do just that a few months later! It turned out that she was researching her book “The Thrifty Forager” and was “looking for people to interview who boldly eat what others might not think to…”! Alys’ book The Thrifty Forager was published the year after but my book with Introduction by Alys took another 3 years! She devotes a whole section to my garden, its plants and The Modern Monk (guess who?) :) In the foreword to my book, there’s a picture of Alys reading my old coverless copy of Cornucopia II in the garden! Below are 4 albums of pictures taken by Alys’ cameraman Brian Wheeler! I have fond memories of this visit during a really hot period after the coldest June since the 1960s. The first album are pictures from the garden, the second from a forage and swim in the fjord, then a trip up to a local mountain Vennafjellet , via a second swimming spot, Nevrahølet (we were finished quite quickly with the pictures and interview in the garden due to the wonderful weather) and finally some pictures from Trondheim! Alys was also a presenter on BBC’s Gardener’s World and writes a gardening column for the Guardian! Other blog posts about Alys! Alys Fowler in the Edible Garden: https://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=276 Alys’ Pool: https://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=5572
1. Brian Wheeler’s photographs of The Edible Garden
2. Brian Wheeler’s photographs from a tour of the bay and beach below the house (after her swim, Alys said for the first time that I lived in paradise!)
3. Trip to Vennafjellet via Nevrahølet swimming hole in the eyes of Brian Wheeler
4. Alys Fowler in Trondheim (by Brian Wheeler)
Dinner at Skyssstasjon where my daughter Hazel worked
With most Norwegians holidaying in different parts of Norway this year, there are a lot of folks passing Malvik both northwards and southwards and I’ve recently had several requests to visit the garden again. On Saturday, I spent a pleasant couple of hours in the company of Mads Pålsrud (from GROWLAB, who designed Norwegian Seed Savers / KVANN’s logos) and musician/gardener Bård Watn from Oslo who were here together with Karoline Rånes Fagerheim, who lives in Kirkenes, and her friend Rannveig: Mads took the following pictures during the garden tour (nice to see what somebody else notices in the garden)
The ex-driveway into the house!
Plants waiting for a place in the garden
My oldest Hablitzia tamnoides
Perennial kale crosses
Angelica atropurpurea
Hosta
Crambe cordifolia, Molopospermum peloponnesiacum and cabbage tree (Cordyline australis)
Allium pskemense
Allium pskemense
Allium cernuum
Mint
Phormium
Hostas
Sonchus oleraceus
French dandelion and Plantago major “Atropurpurea”
I thought I’d take you for a tour of the lower parts of the garden including the forest garden. No commentary, let’s just listen to the birds and observe. In the first video, I unexpectedly stumble on a willow warbler (løvsanger), my first in the garden this year, foraging on the ground in the cold weather….you can otherwise hear singing redwing (rødvingetrost), great tit (kjøttmeis), fieldfare (gråtrost), meadow pipit (heipiplerke), house sparrow (gråspurv) and blue tit (blåmeis) in one of the two videos.
I got home from my trip at 8am this morning! At 10:30 a great group of students studying self-sufficiency (sjølbergerlinja) at Fosen folkehøgskole (Fosen Folk High School) visited for a tour of the garden and afterwards helped me tidying and moving plants from the cellar!
Have a google street view image “peep” at my (red) house and edible garden and surroundings from 2010, with greenhouse the year before the major Boxing Day 2011 storm destroyed it
The wrecked greenhouse made me realise I should concentrate on growing climate friendly vegetables that don’t need expensive climate modification, so I never rebuilt it :) It was a SIGN!
Some pictures from Day 2 of the KVANN (Norwegian Seed Savers) meet in Malvik in my Edible Forest Garden :)
As usual, it was a great group!!
Thanks to Margaret M. Meg Anderson for most of the pictures!
The salad gathered by the KVANN members for lunch….including various Alliums (ramsons, chives etc.), two species Lilium, day lilies, the red leaves of red mitsuba and about 40-50 others
Ha ha!! My helper Lorna used to work in the walled garden at the National Trust garden Mount Stewart in Northern Ireland….I’d joked about the fact that she could work in my own walled garden, the base of my ex-greenhouse :) I laughed when I passed the sign she’d erected, in case visitors didn’t recognise it as a walled garden ;)
…and a few more pictures of the garden this morning:
