‘He who plants a garden plants happiness.’
Chinese proverb
Window-boxes make excellent homes for vegetables, herbs and fruit
Window-boxes don’t insist on being planted with petunias, geraniums and dusty rags of trailing ivy. They make equally good homes for vegetables, fruit, spice and herbs. Growing now, in January, in window-boxes, pots and hanging baskets on my west-facing, 16 x 9ft (4.9 x 2.7m) central London roof garden are Swiss chard, frizzy endive, pak choi, perpetual spinach, lamb’s lettuce, garlic chives, rocket, mitsuba (a type of Japanese parsley), celeriac, winter purslane and curly-leaf parsley. There will be more later in the year, such as dwarf beans, wild strawberries, tomatoes, ‘Salad Bowl’ lettuce and aubergines. Most of the vegetables growing now were sown last spring and autumn, except for the spinach and Swiss chard which were sown two years ago.
Containers are perfect for the elderly, children and the disabled
Almost everyone can have a miniature allotment. Young, small hands and elderly, stiff hands can dig or trowel-dig compost that is only a few inches deep. For those who cannot see, window-boxes and pots are easy for fingers to ‘walk’ over and examine. They are also good for backs that cannot bend; for those who find sitting (especially in a wheelchair) easier; and for those who prefer kneeling or standing. And for people who live in flats without window ledges, there is seed sprouting to try (see page 143). Only a small investment is needed – hardly an overdraft – and this can be made month by month.
Small-scale container gardening is easier to observe
Both people without and people with gardens can enjoy window-box gardening because it is quite different from ‘garden gardening’. Unless you are a snail or a worm, you can’t see seeds sprouting: the eyes are too far away from the ground. But containers can be placed at eye level and are on a small scale. Because such gardening is intimate, you are more a part of it and can observe more of what is going on, particularly through a magnifying glass: the cucumber slowly fattening and lengthening, the wild strawberry flower mysteriously changing into fruit. Although it is small, the enjoyment, interest and enrichment it produces are immense.
I am not a horticulturist, just an enthusiastic beginner. What follows are not intended to be dictatorial instructions, but simply suggestions which may be followed, partly followed or ignored.
