Gardening Update

I first published an article in June 2025 about our move into an apartment after many years with a substantial garden in Frome, Somerset. this is an update as we start to head out of our first winter here.

Sunflower painting with sunflowers

Being both passionate gardeners, the whole loss of the outside space had the potential to leave a nasty wound on our mind set and so we embarked on a period of self-justification about what we would do and could do with the 77 square metres of indoor space that we now had to live in. The earlier blog provides a sense of that mindset and I have to say that we have not moved much away from that position at this time. We have made a few changes and we havent yet got a tree in place yet but that is just a matter of time and the right candidate.

Medelina Flowering

We have not lost any plants to date, although the cyclamen that we bought subsequent to the June article came close and both remain on a knife edge. As you may see from the images, the other plants have grown well and we have a couple of candidates that are now in need of division and repotting. We have had a few plants that have given us flowers and the Medelina was an absolute gem, flowering for three months or so over the summer and autumn and now rewarding us with new growth that is promising two new leaves and a flowering spike.

We have. gone for a few more flowering plants. Mostly bulbs - the reticulated irises were too short lived under the Auk grow lamps. However, the hyacinths in our (unheated) bedroom are doing great.

Our biggest change since June last year has been the purchase of some grow-bulbs which we have placed in the lamps in one of our shower rooms. Here we rotate the plants so that they can alternate with a slightly brighter daylight than they would get in most of the other rooms and they really look well on it. It makes a difference to the amount of watering needed over winter months as in deed, these lucky things are not actually experiencing the full force of an English winter. That being said, we had a problem with our heating in December so that for a few days we were running room temperatures in single figures for a while. One of the Medelina's new leaves suffered a bit but it has more or less recovered especially after we put a clear plastic bag around the sensitive new growth for a few days.

New herbs at the back!

We have taken a short rest in the herb production and have made use of the Auk lights to keep other plants happily in receipt of sunlight equivalent but we will start up the herbs again in spring. We found that we were producing more than we needed for our purposes , especially basil believe it or not. When we go back into production we may only use the one Auk and keep the other for flowering plants. In addition, some herbs don't seem to offer the fullest flavour until they have woody stems (in our opinion). Plants such as sage, rosemary, thyme and oregano. So we have been out and bought one of each as full grown plants!