Interview with gardener and artist Jo Aylward

Interview with Confetti Gardens Contributor Jo Aylward.

Gardener and Artist from Kent, UK.

Edited by Zac O’Driscoll and Franzi Sordon

Foreword:

It’s time to introduce some wonderfully inspiring gardeners who are part of our Confetti Gardens community. Our members share the same vision of making our surroundings more biodiverse and pollinator-friendly while creating amazing planting spaces of their own. Many of us are from different countries and climate zones building gardens that range from tiny square-metre-plots and windowsill-container-growing to large back gardens.

As many of you know by now, every month here at Confetti, we create beginner-friendly, visual, online content and share articles about easy-to-grow plants as well as future-proof gardening tips, aiming to inspire the community to grow more and more biodiverse, heirloom varieties of organic vegetables and flowers.

Behind the scenes, we often collaborate with a lot of wonderful people - gardeners, artists, illustrators - and would love to start introducing them to you. Beginning this month, we are publishing our first interview with one of our amazing contributors! In our new interview series, we’re asking some of our collaborating members about the ways in which they garden, giving our community an insight into the easy ways that we can all turn parts of balconies, lawns or closed front garden patios into an edible and pollinator-friendly, biodiverse haven. We believe that we all need to do our part in saving our wonderful shared home, planet Earth, and why not all begin with a little, one-square-metre garden plot? The more, the merrier!

Our wonderful member Jo, gardener and artist from Kent, UK (hardiness zone 8b) is starting off our first edition and you can read the full interview below.

Thank you so much, Jo, for your artwork contributions, for your time and the wonderful gardening tips and insights you share with us all.

Happy reading everyone, if you have any feedback or questions please don’t be too shy to ask - we always love hearing from people.

Lots of Love from Franzi

Interview with Jo Aylward

@jo.ayalward.ar

Confetti Gardens: Hi Jo, how are you and how are you spending your day today; gardening or in your studio painting?

Jo Aylward: I am very well thank you, enjoying this time of year when there are so many signs of spring in the garden! I am writing this on a Sunday and typically, that is a day when I spend as much time as I can in the garden. Painting is my profession and I need to be in the studio during the week, although I am very lucky to have a garden studio and try to spend a bit of time outside every day, even if it is only to feed the birds and clean out our hens.

You are a nature lover as well and have a kitchen garden where you grow flowers and vegetables. How much space do you have to grow plants, and which plants have you grown in the past?

Our garden is an unusual shape and roughly divided into three areas. By my studio, we have a thin stretch of garden shaded quite heavily by mature trees. This is where we keep a small flock of hens and is the wildest part of the garden. We have elder trees, ground ivy, holly and cow parsley naturalising in this area and try to manage it very gently. Our compost heaps are situated under one of the elders and we have two raised beds for soft fruit which just about tolerate the shade!

The largest part of the plot is an open space with flower borders (probably more than I can actually maintain!), a small shaded area where we are trying to establish a woodland corner and hawthorn hedging on the boundary. Our kitchen garden is the most productive and most exciting part of the plot and has been the result of many years of work clearing tree stumps, concrete and glass left by a previous owner. This area is in full sun but benefits from shelter from the church wall which adjoins our garden and a mixed coastal hedgerow which we planted. It is roughly L shaped with four raised beds and a second area for vegetables bordered with flowerbeds. I estimate the growing space for produce is roughly 20 square metres and I tend to mix up the planting by growing wild flowers, herbs and herbaceous flowers in amongst the veg. We have a small lean-to greenhouse with containers for strawberries and mint as well as growing dahlias and sunflowers. Over the years, I have realised that a wilder, less tidy garden is kinder to nature and I now try to have a gentle approach to weeding and tidying, allowing things to seed where they like and embracing the wilder parts of the garden.

I have grown flowers for many years, favouring cottage garden perennials and increasingly using wildflowers. I also have a passion for salvias, sunflowers and dahlias. I regard myself as a novice when it comes to the vegetables but in the last few years have really discovered the deep satisfaction of growing organic food at home. I generally only have one day a week to garden so need to keep the kitchen garden fairly simple. I am getting to grips with planning out the year‘s crop so that we can extend the growing season with some winter crops but it is a steep learning curve and I’m at the beginning!

You are a big supporter of growing pollinator-friendly flowers and vegetables. Which are your favourite, easy-to-care-for plants to grow for bees and butterflies?

Yes! This is something I feel very passionate about and it increasingly determines what we choose to grow in the garden. I am working hard to develop a plot that can provide wildlife-friendly flowers and habitats all year round. Crocuses are important early flowers for bees, so we have plenty of these in pots and in the woodland area. We also have left ivy to grow freely in parts of our garden to encourage ivy bees alongside providing winter berries for the birds. Other early flowering plants that we grow include euphorbia, hellebores and honesty, which I am really encouraging to spread. Amongst the summer flowering plants, I find herbs like chive, garlic chive, sage, hyssop, borage and thyme an absolute magnet for pollinators if left to flower. In the vegetable garden, I grow wild flower mixes and marigolds amongst the vegetables and nasturtiums, which attract pollinators and helps keep the less welcome visitors, like black fly, away from your crops. I grow salvias and cosmos in the kitchen garden and plan to increasingly follow the Confetti Gardens advice to leave some vegetable plants to go to flower each season for the benefit of pollinators. For anyone new to growing, I would absolutely suggest trying herbs which absolutely tick all the boxes! Easy to grow, suitable for container planting, excellent companion plants, pollinator-friendly, aromatic and make all the difference in the kitchen!

As a gardener, you grow many plants yourself and propagate them from seed. Many of us gardeners love growing future-proof seeds, meaning they are non-hybrid. Do you find heirloom seeds easy to get hold of and do you have any good variety recommendations?

I have been buying organic seed for quite a few years but I feel as though as I am a latecomer to heritage varieties and seed saving. This is an area of my gardening that I would really like to develop as I am keen to garden not only organically but also sustainably. This year I am trying belle de fontaine potatoes (recommended by Confetti Gardens!) and some heritage varieties from Dobbies, where I buy most of my seed, called Cucumber Dar and Pea Blauwschokker. I have also sown two heritage tomato varieties, San Marzano and Ailsa Craig. A friend also sent me a bean pod from a variety that has been around for 400 years, so I am excited to see if the beans germinate.

We are just starting to come out of lockdown here in the UK and the warmer days of spring are approaching full steam ahead, which means the main gardening season is coming up. Many people are still working from home or are on furlough and would like to use their time to start a little garden, either on their balcony or in a front garden. What do you recommend for gardening newbies to try out?

I would always recommend herbs to anyone starting out with gardening. Many will grow happily in pots and are generally fairly low maintenance. As well as being wonderful in the kitchen, if left to flower they are very beneficial for pollinators. My favourites include borage, hyssop, thyme, chives and clary sage, which I grow ornamentally in my flower beds. For edible, easy-to-grow flowers I would recommend nasturtiums, which will again grow in containers but also work well as a companion plants alongside vegetables. Cut and come again varieties of lettuce and spinach are easy to grow, also quick cropping salad crops like radish are easy and fun. Another easy-to-grow vegetable is courgette which when picked small taste completely different to shop-bought varieties. Single dahlia varieties are also pollinator friendly and easy to grow, in a good year they will flower right in to the autumn. If space allows, sunflowers are easy to propagate, beautiful and will bring birds to your garden or balcony. And one last recommendation would be an outdoor cucumber variety because they just taste so amazing when picked small and eaten straight away!

You’re living a vegan lifestyle, is there any homegrown vegetable you like best or any edible flower that you grow in your garden every season?

A few I have already mentioned but we always grow nasturtiums ornamentally and also for use in salads. Other edible flowers we enjoy are borage, marigolds and cornflowers. I am a big fan of green, leafy vegetables and so always grow a lot of spinach, chard and kale which continue cropping into winter. Tomatoes are an essential for me and I experiment with growing them under cover in my small greenhouse as well as outside in containers. I also grow garlic and chilies each year, radish and lettuce, along with lots of herbs so that we are able to pick a salad for lunch or supper. Peas are a vegetable with which I seem to have mixed success but I persevere each season because they are so amazing! We always grow broad and French beans, usually two varieties and also two varieties of courgette including a yellow one. I also enjoy growing squash and pumpkin although they can take up a lot of space. This year I plan to grow a pattypan squash and Black Futsu pumpkin. Late crops include turnips, corn salad and winter purslane which I grow in containers in the greenhouse when the tomatoes and cucumbers are finished.