Organic Gardening
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Gardening Tips
How-tos and advice on creating a garden and growing edible plants, herbs, and flowers.
Garden Projects
Step-by-step projects showing how to build features and structures for the garden.
Skincare Plants
Information on growing and using skin-beneficial plants in handmade skincare.
Grow an Organic Garden
There are all kinds of gardeners in the world. People who love their house plants, herbaceous borders, or are fascinated by a single type of flower. I’m the kind of gardener who likes to put the garden to use. Growing a garden is as much about creating a beautiful green space as it is about improving our lives! That means growing your own food but also nurturing mental and physical well-being.
I also like to grow plants that serve at least two purposes—to look great and be edible, healing, therapeutic, or provide food for wildlife. When I speak about useful plants, as I do in my book, I mean plants that humans can use. A way to reap a reward for the effort of growing a garden. Although I love creating a beautiful space to relax in and enjoy, I need to grow plants that I can eat and use to nurture my creativity. At the very least, they should provide habitat and food for the beneficial wildlife in my garden, too.
Organic Gardening
As gardeners, I feel it’s important for us to keep the garden as organic as possible. That means avoiding using pesticides, herbicides, or fungicides. There are many reasons to do this, but the main ones are to stop polluting our land, to grow the healthiest food necessary, and to ensure that the animals that visit our garden don’t fall victim to poisons. Organic gardening can also be a low-cost way to garden, so it’s a win-win!
Grow a Skincare Garden
You can use many homegrown herbs, flowers, and vegetables to make soap and beauty products. Peppermint in zesty soap, chamomile in lotion, and even rose petals to make skin toner. On Lovely Greens, I share ideas for growing skin-beneficial plants and using them in beauty recipes. Many of the plants I use in handmade soap and skincare recipes can also be used in food or for other uses, meaning you can grow plants for dual purposes.
Gardening Projects
Building and creating your garden is a labor of love, but it can also be expensive. Buying containers, plants, tools, and even bigger pieces of kit, like greenhouses and sheds! That’s why I try to DIY as much as possible for the garden, especially if I can do it with free, reclaimed, and eco-friendly materials. Everything from making newspaper plant pots to pallet planters and propagating new plants! Browse all gardening projects.
Gardening and Garden DIY Videos
You can read ideas here or watch videos that show you how! Above are two of the many gardening videos that I share regularly on the Lovely Greens YouTube channel. I highly encourage you to subscribe, and if you click the bell icon on my channel, you’ll get notifications when new videos are out. The videos I make often the topic of pieces here on the website, such as how to grow an organic garden, make newspaper plant pots or perennial vegetables for your garden. You can also browse all articles with videos.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where can I see more of your garden?
- I have two growing spaces, a rented space (the allotment) and my home garden. Aside from the website, the best place to see both is on my YouTube Channel. I also share many photos and tips on Instagram and Facebook; you can learn more about me here.
Where should I start if I’m a complete gardening beginner?
- Read and watch videos from trusted sources. Get inspiration from blogs like Lovely Greens, gardening books, and gardening TV. YouTube is a great place for information! I also recommend reading this article on 15 Mistakes that Beginner Gardeners Make. It will help you avoid some of the pitfalls.
What gardening zone are you in?
- I live in the Isle of Man, a crown dependency of the United Kingdom. We’re in the middle of the sea between England and Ireland and have a unique climate. Technically, we are zone 9a, using the USDA system, thanks to the Gulf Stream that flows around the British Isles. However, we have the same latitude (54.3240° N) as the middle of Canada. That means our winters are long and dark and have longer stints of cold. To put our climate into perspective, we’re almost as far north as southern Alaska but are considered to have the same gardening zone as parts of northern Florida. Weird huh? The USDA system doesn’t correspond well with our region, and there’s no way that I can grow many warm-weather crops outdoors. That’s why I often refer to my zone as similar to zone 8.