Orto di Casa Cecconi

My first allotment, and then one thing leading to another…

L’orto di Casa Cecconi Plants Recipes Me & Kew One Year at Wisley

Year: 2014

  • Lifting safely

    I have been here at Wisley for over a week now, but this is the week when we start doing some real work in our departments after a few days of induction. It started for me with a full day’s training on safe lifting, which I had never attended before. Do we have to lift a…

  • Horticulture and innovation

    Today I was tidying up my shed, one of those routine horticulture jobs that you could do without and that invite numerous breaks. During one I checked my Twitter and James Wong’s caught my attention: @Botanygeek: Yey! My first article for a weekend paper is out today. Why UK hort needs to be dragged into…

  • Young apple trees, old apple trees

    The London Orchard Project gave me the opportunity to spend another two lovely days pruning. Yesterday, we were in Fryent Park, taking care of a young orchard that had never been pruned before and whose trees required formative pruning. It was a lovely sunny day, and a rather big team was set loose on a…

  • What a worthwhile pursuit to restore an orchard!

    It was Twitter that brought that to my attention: volunteers required for an orchard restoration project. Restoring an orchards is such a worthwhile project. Appeals against the disappearance of the traditional British orchard have gone on for a while now, the NT and Natural England have long campaigned to save orchards as a  matter of…

  • I’ve got seedy penpals… and musings

    January, that time of the year again. Forcing yourself out on a sunny, yet frosty, day to clean the greenhouse – your fingers numb – so it’s ready for the new sowing season… … and, of course, planning & scheming and getting all ready for sowing new seeds! That’s when the first round of the…

  • Cardoons

    Cardoons (Cynara cardunculus) is not a very common vegetable, either here in the UK or indeed in Italy, where, however, they make the occasional appearance in the shops. One of the odd and little known vegetables that are kept alive by elderly people eating them and that have seen better days, when they even had…

About Me

M.Paola M.Paola, that’s me

I got my first allotment in the UK in 2007 and started gI got my first allotment in the UK in 2007 and started growing my own food. Learning as I went along was not enough, so I studied horticulture. Faced with the horticultural warfare, I became a conscientious objector: I use no chemicals and support organic principles and regulations.

Brexit gave me a new life in the Netherlands, three new plots by a nature reserve and an MSc in sustainable food systems.

I write in my personal capacity and, as a language perfectionist and a non native speaker, I keep reviewing my entries’ text for clarity.

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