Green fingers: Gardening trends inside and out
ESPC's Lisa Venter, ESPC Paper Editor and Media Relations Consultant, takes time to blog about one of her favourite topics this week, gardening trends...
Trends are being predicted from influences such as the rather irregular weather we’ve been having as well as evolutions of old designs. Here we talk through three garden trends for 2013 and what you can try in your Scottish gardens this spring.
Mini mobile gardens
Mini mobile gardens are big news this year and thank goodness because relying on the elements to get gardening this year hasn’t been promising so far.
If you haven’t been able, or willing, to get out into the garden to prepare the ground for summer why not take the beginning stages of setting up your own mobile garden and start planting indoors? Or at the very least, sit planters in a greenhouse of sorts where your fledgling plants can get a good, warm start before migrating them outdoors. Depending in which area you live, you may have access to a plot so you could use this to start seedlings off.
Seeds are cheap and easy to mix and match. The idea is that you create planters that are easy to move so that you can bring them out during sunny spells and quickly tuck them away during cold patches.
Grow your own
On that note, growing your own vegetables and herbs may not seem like a new concept but it is set to be a major trend this summer. Eco friendly living is having a major revival at the moment, specifically when it comes to being sustainable. You don’t need an entire back yard for this though.
Plant vegetables and herbs in old plastic bottles with filtration levels made up of soil and gravel and keep them warm in a sunny spot inside until they start rooting and then transfer them into pots of larger containers so you can easily shift them around throughout their lifespan; think mini mobile gardens! By the time summer comes around, you can proudly display these in vintage crates, in and around the house or in terracotta pots on garden steps up to your front door to greet guests on arrival.
Wall gardens
Wall gardens are a great answer to those looking for something impressive yet easy to maintain in small spaces such as urban gardens. These walls can either be ‘air gardens’ which sit in a light weight frame and play host to various tillandsias which thrive in such an environment or walls made up of vertical casings that are mounted onto walls.
A great way to surround a small alfresco dining area or line a garden pathway, vertical wall gardens in any form can be as simple or as complex depending on your level of patience and skills. If you don’t have the time to get to wall gardens, why not go the easy route by setting up planters set amongst trellising or set in planters hung in pots clipped to a wall frame?
About the author
Lisa Venter spends most of her time at the ESPC office on George Street managing The ESPC Paper, engaging with fans and followers via ESPC Facebook and ESPC Twitter channels and looking at as many fancy new houses in Edinburgh on espc.com/tablet that she can during her lunch break. Watch out for more of her gardening blogs and blog posts on other lifestyle topics in the future.
