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: 2015

  • Big buds and short stumps

    Cecidophyopsis ribis, also know as big bud mite, sapsucker. A tiny (at < 1 mm) but nasty one, as it helps transmit what is known as reversion disease, a viral infection. Fascinating life forms, viruses: DNA/RNA sequences coated in protein, that are dormant at maturity and so can survive for hundred of years only to…

  • Rose pruning

    After my rather demoralising experience with the rambling rose, I was looking forward our rose pruning masterclass today. Different types of roses need different pruning regimes to ensure good flowering, and we had a go with the four different types below. In general, when rose pruning, one aims at creating an open centred shrub to…

  • More progress in the Cottage Garden

    The new path was edged! Woodchips ready for spreading Back from the weekend I found another surprise: my wonderful colleague on duty had edged the new path with wooden boards ready to take woodchips… which my fellow trainee in the arboretum got for me as quick as a flash. Another of my plants, Aronia ‘Viking’…

  • The potager in the Cottage Garden

    Back from my extended Christmas leave I found a batch of plants waiting for me in the Garden’s reception area (that is where plants accepted into the garden are checked and monitored for pest and diseases). It was the Lonicera nitida for the hedging in my Cottage Garden, donated to the RHS by the lovely…

  • Conifers

    Conifers. For most of my life I have not considered them much individually: I loved their scent in the air on bright chilly nights when I lived in the mountains in Italy. Then I spent some time among labelled specimens at Kew, and a few things caught my attention: the fresh, aromatic scent they give…

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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