First Garden: Growing Forays in a Student House

While in my master’s year at the University of Sussex, I had the sudden benefit of a garden- we’d had one before, but then it was all concreted, paved patio, with a few fallow corners teeming with hardy bushes and weeds. I attempted creating a small bed for at least a flower of some sort but it was so shady that I was confined to growing inside (often unsuccessfully.)

            The garden was similar to the previous one, but with a few meagre beds lining the walls. Though small and strewn with litter such as chicken bones and splintered fruit crates, and underlying plants such as a grape vine and daffodils that flourished suddenly in spring, this small space offered me an opportunity to grow things on my back doorstep, a chance I had not had yet.

            In these small concreted beds I planted many vegetables and plants, with quite some small (but nonetheless warming) successes. I planted catnip which bloomed fantastically, and dug in potatoes which spawned giant plants, and a satisfying harvest for a first attempt. I made cuttings of the catnip and also the apple mint already growing in the garden. I experimentally (and with a huge pinch of blind hope) planted out a young avocado tree in early Spring, watched as it lost its leaves to pests and cold, before resurging and growing healthy and hardy leaves in summer. I cultivated and planted out many strawberries from runners, and set up a small potting bench where I hardened off tomatoes, plants grow from cuttings, and a courgette plant. As well as in the conservatory, I grew a few tomato plants outside where the potatoes had been, with one also in a pot. The fruits didn’t ripen in time, but instead became a large jar of green tomato chutney.

            As much as I am proud of these minor successes, I am aware of the failures and have learned many a lesson from them. Worst of these was the compost bin; as I had no spade or fork to turn the compost and didn’t put in enough nitrogen-rich ‘browns,’ the bin became filled with a foul-smelling slush that became infested with fruit flies. Begrudgingly I put all of the decomposing waste in five bin bags to go to landfill, where I was trying to save them from going in the first place.

            Failures in growing included carrots, which appeared briefly before being neglected by me and trodden and defecated on by the cat, and garlic, which I usually find a sure and safe thing to grow. The cat abused and removed much of the young shoots, that were apparently in his toilet territory.

            Despite all of this, I have been greatly heartened and inspired by these small forays into small-space gardening, alongside the work I put in (and the vegetables I got out) at the Sussex Roots allotment. When we moved house, I couldn’t bring myself to remove the strawberries that could fruit again, an ornamental grass I had saved, and, most of all, the avocado tree that had defied all odds (for now.) The estate agents have probably counted these as ‘weeds,’ and charged for their removal.