Burgon & Ball 5-A-Day Garden at 2011 RHS Hampton Court Flower Show
By Michael Smith (Veshengro)
This incredible small garden crams enough planting into just 10 square meters of planting space to produce enough fruit and vegetables to proved a person with their recommended 5 portions a day, every day, for a whole year.
The plants are packed in to the planters cheek by jowl in a way that defies the traditional spacing suggestions more often than not found on seed packets. Nevertheless they thrive and crop as if they had the luxury of their own expansive personal space which, indeed, they have, though not in surface area.
The secret is the “deep bed methods” as espoused by the late self-sufficiency expert and guru John Seymour. Growing in very loose deep soil encourages roots to grow straight down rather than sideways, thereby enabling increased planting density, with the resulting harvests of up to fourfold of that which could be achieved by traditional planting methods.
The Burgon & Ball 5-A-Day Garden at the 2011 RHS Hampton Court Flower Show is set in a typical small courtyard, part of a large scale urban development, assessed by the kitchen back door. There is very limited space and lots of hard landscaping. The garden shows how, by using off the shelf, crop specific sized, Burgon & Ball Home Allotment® Planters, it is possible to replicate the conditions of the deep bed method and become self-sufficient in fruit & vegetables.
It is, obviously, also possible to recreate this garden using other planters, especially homemade ones, and reused and upcycled ones, such as builders' bags and such like.
Every single plant in the Burgon & Ball 5-A-Day Garden is edible in some format and all surfaces have been considered for a productive use – including the chamomile rooftop recliner and the wall of herbs in Home Allotment® Vertical Planters.
One of the highlights of the garden is the salad table – a stunning hand crafted table with integral planting trough packed with salad leaves and edible flowers for diners to pick and enjoy at their very freshest.
The Burgon & Ball 5-A-Day Garden also features rainwater harvesting, via copper drainpipes into and under-deck series of water butts, additional water butts to catch falling rain and an attractive copper rain chain channeling further water into one of the butts. You can make rain chains yourself and there are instructions that can be found, I am sure, on the Web.
Space under the stairs is utilized to house a pull-out potting bench and tool store plus a compost bin.
Burgon & Ball Home Allotment® Planters are available from all good garden centers with recommended retail prices from £9.95 to £27.95 and full information can be found on Burgon & Ball's website www.burgonandvall.com and also www.5adaygarden.co.uk.
As I have said earlier, it is obviously possible to create your own version of this garden – tailored to your own space – with a lot of DIY and reusing and repurposing this or that item of waste. If, on the other hand, you want to do it the direct route then there are the planters that you can buy, obviously.
© 2011
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