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

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  • Goodbyes galore (Week 19, Friday)

    More goodbyes today as the apprentices left the Arboretum to go under glass (that is what they do in their second year). This trickle of people going away keeps reminding me of my imminent departure and is making me rather sad. Today it was raining, so it was the perfect time to do the preliminary…

  • When the Cotoneaster swallowed a Sibiraea (Week 19, Wednesday and Thursday)

    … but the story begins with an overgrown Pyracantha that was in the way of grass mowing. That is what I started to tackle, which took me one day and a half, as it turned out it was likely two Pyracantha, very similar but different enough (to be confirmed). And when those two plants were brought back…

  • Fraxinus (Week 19, Tuesday)

    I get a bit miffed when the media get hold of a piece of news and make such a fuss about it and breed hysteria just to sell more. As it was with fungus Chalara fraxinea, which causes ash dieback, earlier in the year. Now ask anyone about plants and they will know practically nothing about…

  • RHS Wisley (Week 19, Monday)

    Today we went for a trip to the Royal Horticultural Society’s flagship garden in Surrey, Wisley. It is a beautifully manicured garden that I have had the pleasure to visit three times this year, with herbaceous borders by famous designers, trial grounds for plants so they can be judged for their garden worthiness and get…

  • The art and science of pruning (Week 18, Thursday and Friday)

    There are three basic rules to pruning: avoid pruning; the best way to go is to choose a species suitable for its location, & the available space, right from the beginning,  then to get a good specimen of the species; look at the plant as an individual: by all means look it up, learn what…

  • Spiraeas (Week 18, Wednesday)

    Was finalising the stockcheck of bed 435-03 today, which is Spirea central. This is one of the tidier beds, with plants well within their own boundaries for the great part. But a couple of the labels on the Spireas got mixed up, so I had to undertake a bit of investigative work. Internet at the…

  • The return of the bindweed (Week 18, Monday)

    I wrote extensively about bindweed and my experiment to see how long it would take for it to regrow, once carefully dug out from as deep as possible in the entrails of the earth… In any case, here is a photographic summary from the first week of June, when I carried out the clearance –…

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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