Hi, and welcome to my Galway garden.
My name is Grace Jolliffe and like it says up there, I like to garden.
Actually I love to garden but I couldn’t get that domain!
IN MY GALWAY GARDEN
We now have a large 1.4 acre garden which sounds great, except it isn’t a garden.
It’s a wild place on Galway’s Wild Atlantic Way and it is close enough to the Burren to share it’s lime-stoned and rock-filled landscape.
So what we actually have is more rocks – some of which are the size of tables and more weeds than actual soil.
What soil we do have is poor and limey, so we are always looking for ways to improve it as well as having to buy it by the ton.
Although I love to garden I don’t claim to be an expert. I am far from it.
This is the first garden I’ve had that’s bigger than a postage stamp.
I am learning as I go along. Like lots of learners there will be mistakes.
But, I’m not going to hide them because I want to show a real garden is like.
I write about what doesn’t work as well as what does because that’s how we learn – from mistakes.
Nobody’s garden is perfect and even the real, professional gardeners have failures.
A REAL GARDEN
Real gardens aren’t like the one’s on telly either, they’re much messier and generally have worse soil than their TV counterparts.
In a real garden, especially in rainy Galway weeds grow faster than you can believe possible – especially if you go on holiday.
In fact, going on holiday and leaving an unattended garden behind is like leaving your teenage kids home alone – you will come back to a mess .
I was going to do all the garden myself with a bit of help from hubby.
That was my plan but like they say, while we make plans, the gods make jokes.
The joke on me was a hill-walking accident in 2012 where I broke both bones in my leg.
Four surgeries and various pins and plates later, my recovery has been slow.
I am still packing a lot of hardware in my right leg – hardware that’s going to stay forever, or so they say.
GOING POTTY
Due to these setback I wasn’t able to start gardening when I thought I would.
All I could do at first was sit at the kitchen table sorting seeds and planting them in little pots.
Now, I am still getting around okay although I do have a pretty unstable leg but I can work in the garden quite happily – with a little help from my husband and friends.
One thing I had quite a lot of help with was preparing and planting a wildflower meadow.
I had dreamed of a wildflower meadow.
I thought it would be idyllic – you know like the ones in the pictures, the ones with the beautiful flowers, cornflowers and poppies, waving in a soft breeze and puppies and…
But then I woke up!
The dream was over and the nightmare began.
Well maybe a slight exaggeration there but remember what I said above about ‘even the real, professional gardeners having failures,’ well my wildflower meadow seems to have been one of these.
Never mind. I have kept going and continue to develop my Galway garden.
I love growing my own vegetables and this has been a great success.
Home grown vegetables taste better than anything from the shops.
And there it’s a great pleasure to eat food you have grown yourself.
I have a particular interest in permaculture and hoping to apply it’s principles as much as I can. I will write about it as I learn.
As I said above, I am pretty learning as I go.
So, I would be grateful for any advice or comments you may have.
Grace
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