Coco, Olive and Regina George—yes, the latter has a Mean Girls streak—give me the eye as I step into their space. It’s not surprising: I’d protect my coop if I were a chicken pecking my way around Rosie Daykin’s ridiculously stylish backyard on Vancouver’s west side.
Alongside the giant fir trees, arrays of flower beds, basalt walls and winding bluestone paths punctuated by an expansive greenhouse, are the three “girls”, star players in Daykin’s new cookbook. That’s because the multi-hyphenated Daykin—known for her well-honed interior design talents and the nearby Butter Baked Goods, which she sold three years ago—can now add ‘gardener’ to her repertoire.
Her fourth cookbook, The Side Gardener, is named not only for the once-languishing, now-neat planters that flank her home, but also for the way Daykin gardens “on the side” with her other ventures. The pages meander beautifully through useful tips on how to grow your own—whether it’s a twoacre plot or an herb garden—and resulting recipes from her plants, edible flowers and, of course, eggs. (Daykin’s Cuckoo Maran, Olive Egger and Ameraucana repay her luxury and loving attention by laying aplenty).
Based on the food she loves to eat, The Side Gardener was “a fun exercise” in creating “veggie-forward” recipes that spring from the yard. She rattles off how zucchinis inspired a chocolate cake, how her red peppers transformed a bisque with crab and how her beets perfected a ravioli.
“After this much time, I have an instinctive feel for what will work pretty quickly—find the base, then you riff on it,” she opines over homemade peanut butter cookies and Yorkshire tea. (Her best vegetable is the radish. “You sprinkle them,” she adds, “then a sneeze later, they’re up. Very
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Like many northern gardeners, I had red-hot poker envy for many years but ruled out growing them because of their iffy -chances of surviving winter in my region. However, I am very excited about some of the newer Kniphofia introductions we are growing at the Chicago Botanic Garden. Being able to overwinter a South African plant in the Midwest is pretty cool, right?
With the third series of the hit drama about to start and The Bridgerton Garden coming to the RHS Chelsea Flower Show later this month, now is the ideal time to invest in some new plants to bring a touch of Regency glamour and romance to your garden.
Drought-tolerant, laden with nectar, evergreen, long-flowering, and so pungent that it fills the garden with scent, lavender is deservedly popular. The late garden designer Rosemary Verey said, «You can never have too much of it in your garden». In its preferred conditions, of well-drained soil that is baked by the sun, it is easy to grow.
At the back of the house, Adirondack chairs are placed beside a border with a small standard wisteria, a box spiral and purple Iris ‘Art Deco’ set off by lime-green euphorbia. An unknown red rose on the wall is from Mark Rumary’s 1960s scheme.
May is historically the hungry gap in the vegetable garden, because it is the time when the winter crops run out and before the summer crops get going. If you have been well organised, you may have some early crops of salad leaves, broad beans, radishes and even strawberries to harvest towards the end of the month – as well as asparagus, which is at its prime now. But the main focus this month is the sowing, nurturing and tending of your crops, as growth accelerates. Potatoes should be earthed up so the tubers are not exposed to light, while peas and broad beans need supporting with pea sticks or canes and twine as they get bigger. Weeding must be done regularly (little and often is my motto) and, if the weather is dry, watering is essential. It is best done as a thorough soak every few days rather than a scant daily sprinkling. At the start of May, I sow tender crops like tomatoes, cucumbers and courgettes in seed trays and individual pots. I keep these in the greenhouse until later in the month, when it has warmed up and they can go outside. As the month goes on, the focus shifts to planting out. I find it very satisfying to be able to plant a neat row of seedlings along a garden line, rather than try the lottery of direct sowing into the ground, then thinning out. Using the no-dig method, I will have already prepared my beds with a layer of well-rotted compost. Just before planting out, I will rake the bed to break down any larger clods and give the seedlings a better chance of establishing.
Bridgerton is coming to Chelsea this month, as Netflix makes its debut at the flower show, with a garden themed around its popular TV show. First time Chelsea designer Holly Johnston has created a garden based on the personal journey of the show’s main character, Penelope Featherington. The Bridgerton Garden is part of the Sanctuary Gardens area at the show.
Hebes are popular evergreen shrubs, mostly native to New Zealand although some are native to Australia and South America. They come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, and are suitable for growing in a range of sites and planting schemes. Hebes are excellent in shrub borders, used as ground cover or low-growing hedging, and are relatively low-maintenance.