Richard Bell's Wild West Yorkshire nature diary

Vegetable Plotting

Sunday, 21st January, 2007

Backyard I KNEW THE NEW SketchUp 3D program would be useful; here’s our back garden, the Rough Patch of my garden wildlife sketchbook (see www.willowisland.co.uk) in a 3D version that me only took a couple of hours to put together (as opposed to looking out the window and sketching it in 5 or 10 minutes!) but imagine, being able to do a fly-through of the garden (even the shed, if I put in sufficient detail!) and having the option of presenting it in several different sketch/watercolour/blue-print styles.

Barbara and I measured up the existing beds and their position in relation to the shed and hedge. You can set the program to feet and inches (or metric if you prefer) and be as precise as you wish, but, as the name implies, the program is especially useful for producing concept designs in an intuitive way.

Grow Your Own Veg

RHS Veg Plot Inspired by the current Carol Klein series Grow Your Own Veg, Barbara and I are determined to get the garden back into working order this spring.

Part of the Grow Your Own Veg series follows the Royal Horticultural Society’s demonstration of what can be grown on a 3x3 metre square vegetable plot (a useful website, it even includes short videos on aspects of veg growing). The Society has been running the trial at its RHS Harlow Carr garden at Harrogate, which, being within an hour’s drive of here, must have a very similar growing season to us.