Love the Garden

When I lived in Manchester, my house was dotted with potted plants. A peace lily that was a housewarming gift, spider plants, ivy… most windows or sets of shelves had some variety of living foliage. During my teenage years I always had at least one plant in my bedroom and would happily adopt new ones to add to the leafy feel of my personal space, so having an entire house to fill with plants was rather exciting. As a pale-skinned hayfever sufferer, the garden was never somewhere I completely enjoyed spending time and so my gardening efforts only extended as far as re-potting house plants and growing roots on cuttings. This is very satisfying though, and many a soothing moment was spent on weekends in my Manchester home looking after the plants I had accumulated during our time there. Sadly, a move to a property with far fewer window-ledges meant that I left all my plants behind and gradually forgot the pleasure of of a fresh bag of potting compost. These days, all I look after is the odd herb plant from the supermarket, which usually ends up devoid of its tasty leaves before it has a chance to get very big at all. However, the people over at Love the Garden reckon that growing your own leads to much bigger plants and it’s even easier than you might think. As I expressed an interest the moment they mentioned growing something that could be eaten, they kindly sent me a box of goodies to help me cultivate my own ‘basil bush’. I decided that my sunny office windowsill was the best place for this gardening adventure to take place – until there’s enough there to cook with, of course! – and so today I planted the seeds and we’re ready to go. Deciding to read no instructions whatsoever, as this was supposed to be easy, I’m now wondering if I’ll manage to mess it up… but the pot is right in front of me five days a week so at least I won’t forget to water it. I shall blog again as soon as there is something exciting to report.

UPDATE: 10 days in and I have photo evidence that I haven’t messed it up yet!