The Plot Goes to Pot at The Garden Museum

For those with allotment envy, it has now been proved that an allotment can fit into a pot, scarecrow and all. The Garden Museum is displaying 34 planters designed by some of the country's best-known gardeners from today until Thursday July 1st. Want inspiration for filling your pots? Don't miss this fun opportunity to see (and bid for) imaginative and witty compositions from Chelsea Best-in-Show Winner Andy Sturgeon, BBC garden presenter Joe Swift, actress (and gardener) Penelope Keith and many others. Here are some tasters...Gardeners' World Allotmenteer Joe Swift compliments low level planting with colour coordinating pot, while photographer Edwina Sassoon fits the whole allotment into her pot, tumbler tomatoes doing just that, scarecrow perched high rise.

The Garden Museum's Matt Collins includes driftwood, Artist Charlotte Verity goes stylishly simple with a lemon tree in her elegant planter painted by Christopher Le Brun, and Richard Reynolds confirms that there's no stopping a Guerrilla Gardener.

Photographs (c) Edwina Sassoon

Perfect strawberries for Wimbledon week

It's an odd thing, but the reason I'm really proud of the strawberries I've grown at the plot this year is because they are so immaculate, they look bought. But you don't get perfection without some pretty determined action. I sprinkled Fito Slug Stoppa Granules, a 100% natural product, around each plant. On top of that went a thick layer of straw to prevent the fruit getting muddy or soggy. Next came fine mesh netting to cover the plants. Last year I used horrible flimsy netting with big holes and twice had to release small, panicked birds by cutting them out of the netting that was trapping claws and wings. Now it's the fine stuff or nothing on my plot. The only snag to my Fort Knox is that I find it practically impossible to get at the brilliant red wonders myself, but it's worth the effort and been a victory against legless, legged or winged competitors.

Out out d... (allelopathic) couch grass

All the excitements of Chelsea Flower Show and our own Open Day now over, it's back to earth. All allotmenteers battle with our old enemy, couch grass, but only recently did I learn that it had negative allelopathic qualities and can actively inhibit other plants from growing. Having just digested that bit of information, I hear on Gardeners Question Time that climbing beans don't have a hope if they are beside onions and heaven forfend that we should sow radishes near our red peppers. On the other hand, I believe growing mint near your roses helps keep aphids away so I thought I'd take it a step further and spray my rose with mint tea!

Allotments Support Open Garden Squares Weekend: 12th/13th June 2010

London Allotments will be opening their gates in support of London Parks and Gardens Trust this weekend. More than 200 gardens will be open, including Beatrix Potter, Branch Hill and Fulham Palace Meadows Allotments. Click on any of these allotments for opening times and details of the Open Gardens Squares Weekend. However...as an insider... I can promise you the opportunity to see more than 400 plots of diversity, imagination, and beauty you will find hard to beat at Fulham Palace Meadows. We shall be selling our very locally grown produce and offering tea and home-made cakes from 11.30am-3.30pm on Saturday. What more could you want? Here's a sneak preview of our allotments in June.

Photograph (c) Edwina Sassoon from The Three-Year Allotment Notebook to be published by Frances Lincoln on August 5th, 2010 @ £12.99

The gentleness of a city allotmenteer

Just leaving the allotments this morning, when my sister stopped in her tracks. A man was crouched by a wounded pigeon. It had been attacked by a magpie. As a crowd gathers around an accident, so a ring of pigeons surrounded the scene of the crime, seemingly watching, guarding. We strolled off. Some moments later, we were approached by same man with his bike. "Excuse me," he said, having heard us discuss this. "It's not a pigeon that's been wounded." He opened his bike bag to reveal two fledgling birds of prey nestled safely in the bag. Despite already sizeable beaks, their young bodies defenceless and bleeding. He thought they were buzzards. I know there are sparrow hawks in the allotments. We none of us were knowledgeable twitchers. They were en route to the experts.

It reminded me of our special responsibility to birdlife this summer. The winter hit them hard, garden birds need all the help we can offer them to keep numbers up. In allotments we have to balance nurturing our birdlife with protecting our plots from rats and other vermin. But just after I created my birdbath (see earlier post), I discovered this website which really does seem to have something for every one of our feathered friends: www.farbrookfarm.co.uk

Chelsea Flower Show: Shops for everyone

Just as exhaustion struck on the hottest day of the year, a young man popped off the Tregothnan stand and handed me an instant Cornish Cream Tea. From leaves grown on the Tregothnan estate, a cuppa has never tasted better.

I turned round to see

the coolest plant containers from Bronzino (above right). Made from

solid copper and zinc they put any other pot I've seen in the shade.

Meanwhile, my old friend The Allotment Shop still has the best garden string in town and a variety of must-haves for any allotmenteer.

(photographs: Edwina Sassoon)

During Chelsea Flower Show week, ANYTHING GOES as Cartier in Sloane Street showed us...

How cool is being such a prize winner outside the show ground?

(photographs: Edwina Sassoon)

Top Hat at Chelsea Flower Show, Old Hat at the Allotments

The ingenuity of Chelsea Flower Show hats leaves Royal Ascot's attempts at the starting gate. My fav (above) comes from Kate Bainbridge of Simply Flowers

At the allotments, multi-tasking hats from around the world get put to good use (above right)

(Flower Show photograph:

(c) Edwina Sassoon)