New year, new blog
Happy New Year! I’ve started my blog so that’s one new year's resolution in the bag already. Whoop!
A windswept me on the banks of Lough Ree. The Irish midlands are all about bogs and water!
What will this blog be about?
Plants, mostly. Plants in designs, medicinal plants, culinary plants, foraging, recipes, as well as design stuff - a deeper delve into my own designs, other people’s designs, and whatever else takes my fancy. There will likely be a smattering of science chucked in because that’s my background and ultimately I like to know what’s going on at a cellular level. Prepare to be bored enthralled!
Sods of turf (peat) stacked in Uncle Paul’s shed.
This was the primary fuel for heat and cooking for many generations, harvested, dried and carried back to the farm from the local bogs. It’s hard work, and most have abandoned this way of life due to ecological concerns and the availability of alternative fuels.
My interest in plants goes right back to 80’s rural Ireland where pastoral life has a hefty dose of pagan folkloric rituals thrown in. It was common to spend your days trying not to anger the fairies by treading on their toadstools, or doing circles around the holy well to cure your warts. I lived on my uncle Paul’s farm of about 30 hectares surrounded by three generations of dad’s family, roaming from house to house eating cake and drinking tea (caffeine consumption in children didn’t seem to be a consideration in those days), sitting in front of the turf-fuelled range cooker to dry my no doubt wet socks from wandering through the boggy fields with our dog, Benji. My family had so much knowledge of the land, and it was a real privilege to spend those formative years roaming around absorbing information without even realising it.
Of course, there was an interlude. I moved to London when I was ten, and the farm was left behind only to be visited in the summer holidays. University, academia, and then the corporate world followed, only to find myself craving green things again in my mid-thirties when Royal Horticultural Society evening classes inspired a quest for change.
Three generations of Sleator’s in a potato field, of course!
In the coming months I will be sharing some garden visits including a truly awe inspiring time spent in Japan. I will have some folklore and medicinal plant info. There may be some seasonal recipes, the start of a herbarium series, and probably some foraging, as why limit yourself to the boundaries of your own land when there is so much wild food and medicine under our noses? I will share some of the work I’m designing including a raised bed design with a focus on plants for auto-immune health, and a small courtyard garden in the centre of Manchester. If any of this sounds interesting, please sign up and join the conversation!
