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It’s blatantly obvious how much I love gardens, especially Cottage Gardens. In my last blog post I discussed the importance of  ‘Urban Cottage Gardens’ and how great they are and so much so than Darren Lakin’s urban cottage garden in South Yorkshire. Last weekend I had the absolute pleasure of visiting Darren’s garden. I’ve been a fan of his beautiful space for I’d say the bestpart of a year now. Since I found him on social media,  we have regular chats about gardening and brocante.  When I was poorly earlier this year Darren regularly asked how I was doing and sent me a lovely gift to help cheer me up, which was ever so thoughtful. I approached Darren for a visit with two minds, as much as I was dying to see the real garden behind his beautiful photgraphs, I also have utmost respect that gardens are a personal space. Luckily for me, I was welcomed so here we are.

When I pulled up at Darren’s I knew right away which home was his. Darren’s style is very country vintage chic and even his home oozes this beautiful charm. I was welcomed in and had a wee chat and a good brew before being invited into the garden.

Walking into the garden was truly magical, Darren is very humble often saying throughout the tour “It’s nothing special, but I like it”. The thing is though his garden is VERY special. It has charm and oodles of Darren’s passion just flowing about the place, every inch of it is tended to with care and love and this shines from it.

My first stop was at his homemade potting bench, which is made from salvaged materials Darren got from a scrap man and then using his craftsmanship skills put together and finished off with vintage décor looking like something featured in The English Garden magazine.  There were plant theatres and more décor adorned walls, with Darren’s homemade signs, a plumbed in Belfast sink and I’d only just stepped in and I was in garden heaven.

Next we wondered in to the main garden, where the famous tool shed sits adorned with all its surrounding blooms, it was just as amazing to see in real life and was everything I expected it to be, however the shed did seem a lot smaller than it does in the photographs, but that takes nothing away from gorgeous it is.

The plant combinations were amazing and in true cottage style. Darren were more than happy to disclose some were self seeders and not his doing, again his humble nature shining. In bloom were bright rudbeckias, dahlias, petunias, nepta, fushias, scabious, campanulas, echinops, geraniums, hydrangeas, agastache and loads more. Darren insisted his garden had gone over for the year and that at it’s best is probably late May-June ….. so I guess that’s just an excuse for another visit! However I still thought it was amazing.

As we were about to move round to the Potager, the heavens opened up and we had to take shelter in the greenhouse. In there were chilli’s and tomatoes galore and more of the vintage chic décor, stamping personality on his wonderful growing space.

After the rained died down we ventured in to his potager area, and it was abundant with crops but grown so beautifully they were decoration too. From kale, to lettuce everything was pristine, we harvested the most delicious smelling carrot that was perfect in size and form, if anything Darren is most definitely a gifted grower. His wife takes care of the meals and Darren does the growing from carrot cakes and bakes to yummy savoury dishes, seems it’s not just Darren who’s talented in this household.

Chatting with Darren was like chatting to an old mate I’d not seen in a few years. You just spill out on to each other all the great things you do and have been getting up to in the gardening world and it was fab. I don’t have many real life gardening friends, so when you talk to people with the same passion you get lost in conversation.

One of my main reasons for wanting to visit Darren and his garden was to highlight that real gardens the majority of us have are wonderfully inspiring and whilst they’re not acres worth they are still magnificent and should be celeberated because they’re real!

Thanks for stopping by!

You can find Darren and his garden on

Twitter and Instagram @darrenlakin2

Go give a follow and ask him any questions you’d like to know that I didn’t cover, I’m sure he’d be more than happy to chat to you or just tell him how amazing his garden is!

Brightest Blessings,

Bo xx

  My Visit To Darren’s Garden It's blatantly obvious how much I love gardens, especially Cottage Gardens. In my last blog post I discussed the importance of  …

[wwwfoecouk]

RT @BohoRaspberry: Good Morning lovely people and happy #WorldEnvironmentDay let's do this - #plasticfree #zerowaste living rocks! Here's my breakfast overnight oats with chia seed and homemade stewed rhubarb😋🌍🌱 https://t.co/LVIMncR36l

Good Morning lovely people and happy #WorldEnvironmentDay let's do this - #plasticfree #zerowaste living rocks! Here's my breakfast overnight oats with chia seed and homemade stewed rhubarb😋🌍🌱 pic.twitter.com/LVIMncR36l

— The Bohemian Raspberry (@BohoRaspberry) June 5, 2018

from Twitter https://twitter.com/friends_earth June 05, 2018 at 08:00AM

[theboh3mianraspb3rry]

The Importance Of Urban Cottage Gardens

The Importance Of Urban Cottage Gardens

I love cottage gardens, they are my passion and building one has been my dream come true. But my cottage garden is not authentic! I don’t live in a cottage in a rural village with acres at my feet. I live in a semi detached urban village. That, however, wasn’t going to stop me having my dream of a cottage garden – after all, it’s about the garden, not the cottage! The modern day cottage gardens…

[theboh3mianraspb3rry]

It’s the height of summer and everything is growing wild and I love it. The bee’s are rolling around in the plants in ecstasy and their happiness is most certainly contagious, you can feel their joyous vibrations as the buzz about the place.

This week in my cut flower vase I wanted to create summer, you know the laid back evenings that are warm and chilled with frills around the hedges……. sorry I meant edges 🙂

So here it is this weeks arrangement

The yellow loosestrife on the allotment I have grown to absolutely love. As I walk down the alley to get to the plot you can smell it’s honey nectar, it’s stronger the closer you get and the bees are of plenty in their tiny elements.

The daisies are starting to come through strongly too dancing alongside the loosestrife, it’s amazing how the allotment pallete has gone from blues and oranges to yellows and whites. And the feverfew was a new addition next to the newly built wildlife area.

The good thing about these flowers in an arrangement is that they have a good vase life, lasting anywhere from 7-10 days in clean water with a drop of sugar syrup.

Anyway I’m going to let the flowers do the talking!

Thanks for stopping by!

Brightest Blessings,

Bo x

Because It’s All About My Vase, Bout My Vase, Oh Flowers! It's the height of summer and everything is growing wild and I love it. The bee's are rolling around in the plants in ecstasy and their happiness is most certainly contagious, you can feel their joyous vibrations as the buzz about the place.

[theboh3mianraspb3rry]

For me this year, the Rose has completely stolen the show. You can really understand why it’s been in the hearts of many for millennia. With so many to choose from, they really are star performers in any garden. When I was younger and my taste wasn’t as refined as it is today, I wasn’t a fan of the rose much. But what a fool I was to be so passive of such an elegant beauty.

This year at Gardener’s World Live to mark the 50 years of Gardener’s World anniversary they had viewers vote for the most influential plant of the last 50 years. Adam Frost put forward the Rose and rightly so it won, but let’s face it, it had too, what else could compare to the influence this plant has? If you use the hashtag #rose on Instagram, you’ll see just some of its influence and how much people hold it dear to them. It speaks of love and romance, we give roses to say we care. They are loved everywhere all over the world and some so much they have them tattooed on themselves. We wear the rose pattern on our clothes or in accessories, we have paintings, the list goes on forever, the rose is a truly iconic plant and almost everyone can recognise it instantly.

However, there is a downside to this beauty. Unfortunately, she is susceptible to disease, most particularly ‘Black Spot’ a fungal disease (Diplocarpon rosae) which effects its foliage turning them a yucky yellow with black spots on, it also reduces the plant’s vigour. The main cause of the disease is the wet spring weather we have here in the UK. The moist, humid conditions spread the fungal virus which is windborne and when rain is splashed onto newly emerging leaf tissue.

My roses have suffered terribly from the black spot this year and I’m an organic gardener, so I’m currently researching an organic method of resolving the fungal infection. (If you have an organic solution against black spot please let me know in a comment below) I’m going to try using Neem Oil, which is a vegetable oil pressed from the fruits and seeds of the Neem (Azadirachta indica). The other organic method most people adopt is to strip the affected leaves from the shrub. NEVER, however, compost these, and try not to let them drop on your soil surface or the spores can spread, instead, you would do well to burn them in an incinerator or add them to your regular waste bin. Roses can also succumb to other diseases too like powdery mildew, rose dieback and rose rust. They also are loved by a few pests too, like aphids and brown scale to name a few.

But, this shouldn’t repel you from wanting to grow roses, they just require a little TLC and I promise in return they will reward you abundantly.

In my garden, there are 15 roses in total. A few are ‘Unknown’ varieties that I never recorded when they were planted many moons ago (gardening fail) and some are new, nine in total, as my love for them, has gone wild over the last year.

I have a mixture of colours and types. Climbers, ramblers, floribundas, hybrid teas, classic, and shrub and they are all equally wonderful and I want as many as I possibly can grow in my small garden. The fragrance on a summers day as the sunshine gently heats the flower head which then fills the air with the most luscious scent is the epitome of summer for me. It makes me want to drink tea and read a classic novel, whilst I bathe in the fragrance of Turkish delight.

Caring for a Rose isn’t as difficult as you may think. Planting up is usually done in autumn or spring and each spring the plant should be fed with a good organic rose fertiliser and a mulch of well-rotted manure. The repeat flowering varieties also benefit from a second feed after their first real performance, this is usually done around July when they are gearing up to put on another performance.

Pruning is usually done in the winter months and if you follow the basic principles of the 3 D’s you can’t really get it wrong. This is Dead, Diseased and Damaged, it basically means take out all that fall into these categories. You want to make your cut on an angle too, just above a bud, so the rain water can run off the cut. To deadhead or light prune through the summer months is critical to how well your rose performs, if you don’t regularly cut the spent blooms, the plant will focus its energy on creating seed (hips). To keep the plant in good shape and have its best chance against the disease it’s good to keep the plant airy, you don’t want your branches to rub against each other. You can help it by making your cut just above a 5 leaf set (not 3) above this determines where the new branch will form, helping to keep good airflow around it.

Do you grow roses and if so which is your best variety? Do you have some organic methods for growing roses that you swear by, if so please share them below?

Thanks for reading, and don’t forget to SUBSCRIBE.

Brightest Blessings,

Bo xx

      SPOTLIGHT ON – The Rose For me this year, the Rose has completely stolen the show. You can really understand why it's been in the hearts of many for millennia.

[theboh3mianraspb3rry]

Last year I decided to take my passion for plants a step further. I became a Horticulture student.  I ran an online search and found that my local college did a great selection of horticulture courses, including RHS courses. I made my selection and enrolled straightaway.

I was very excited to get started. My course was part-time, I attended one Saturday per month for a year, which is very flexible if you work full-time. During my course we were incredibly blessed weather wise too, which meant we didn’t have to seek shelter in the classroom or greenhouse, which didn’t hinder practical play.

It did take a couple of sessions for my tutor to get used to how outspoken I am, but I built a brilliant relationship with my tutor, despite not alwats seeing eye-to-eye (she’s non-organic, im an organic gardener) she supported me 100% when I was ill towards the back end of my course.  She also pushed me in my classes too, knowing I had some horti knowledge and experience she would make my life harder – but in a good way!

I love college, my fellow pupils were great and each of them so different from one another, with different outlooks on horticulture paths.  We had the community worker, the tradesman, the teacher, the conservationist and more. Each of them offering a different take on the vast world of horticulture.

The sad thing for me, unfortunately, was discovering half way through the course that the practical certificate just wasn’t enough. I had gardened for the last 10 years and have always been very proactive in self-learning, so when we would do a new workshop I kind of already knew how to do a lot of them, maybe not quite to the standard of the RHS though. Therefore I don’t feel I personally took away all that much in terms of new skills.

My other reason for disappointment, is that the RHS didn’t make it clear on there course blurb that actually this course is just a basic certificate and you need your theory too if you want to be taken seriously in the horti world. These were the new skills I needed really, the science and theory behind plants, soil etc. And having learnt this the long way round, I’m now enrolled for a two year course to turn my certificate into a diploma. Wish me luck – I’m going to need it as I’m also taking on my Level 3 practical alongside it too – Nope I don’t do things by halves!

However, just because it wasn’t completely right for me doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be for anyone thinking of doing this course. Some of my fellow students found the vast majority of the course a brand new experience and are now confident gardeners because of it. If you’re new to gardening and don’t want to make it a career, then the Level 2 Practical certificate is brilliant for that. If the idea of studying and reading text books isn’t your cup of tea and you prefer a more hands on approach to study then this is a brilliant course for that – there is very little study involved except for your plant identification tests.

Lucy Clements

I caught up with a Horti buddy of mine Lucy Clements (who some of you may already follow on social media). Lucy has recently finished her RHS Level 2 Diploma. I asked her about her horti student experience. Here’s what she had to say:

Becoming a horticulture student was an exciting challenge after not being in education or having exams of any kind for over 20 years. So far I have completed an entire level 2 diploma and one certificate of level 3. I took one year to complete the level 2 diploma at Bristol City College. I assumed it would be informative and interesting but was very surprised by the huge amount of work required and how time consuming it eventually became. The theory was fascinating and I was taught by an incredible horticulturalist, author and lecturer, Tim Foster. I found the sessions engaging, detailed and thoroughly enjoyable. There was also additional reading and research that could be done following lessons if you wanted further information. The level 2 practical, I found less engaging but this was mostly because I had a lot of gardening experience.

I would advise anyone taking the theory exams, for both level 2 and 3, not to under estimate the size of the syllabus and the amount of data and info you need to absorb to pass. There is nothing particularly taxing about this information, no analysis is required, but the sheer amount is overwhelming, especially if you are working or have a busy family life. I’d recommend getting photos of plants and their names on the wall and cover your house with diagrams at least a month before the exam date!

The level 3 certificate I studied at Bristol Botanic Gardens which was a fantastic location and amazing to attend lectures by Nick Wray, Curator. Once again the course material was fascinating and far more in depth than level 2.

Overall I would say that studying horticulture has been like learning a new language. I look at the world around me in a totally different way. I like to think that now plants talk to me but people might think I’m mad!

You can find Lucy on social media Twitter @Lucy_Clements_ and Instagram @ljclementsgardener she’s always been so helpful in gardening conversations and has a stunning allotment.

Are you a horticulturist, what was your student experience like? Or are you thinking of becoming one? I’d love to know your thoughts, please comment below or tweet me @bohoraspberry

  Thinking of becoming a Horticulture student?? Last year I decided to take my passion for plants a step further. I became a Horticulture student.  

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Forsythia x intermedia ‘Lynwood Variety’ has to be one of my favourite spring flowers. I mean just look at it, nothing else required in this vase at all, it speaks for itself. Forsythia makes an excellent cut flower but it does have a short vase life unfortunately.

As a shrub it’s also spectacular, flowering from February to April it creates a beautiful warm glow in the garden, almost like a promise of a warm spring and summer.

However I have some issues with how some people maintain their Forsythia. You really shouldn’t prune it before it has flowered otherwise you will not get a good spray of flowers. It should have stems of varied height protruding out like a blaze of sparkles. If you prune it in Autumn and Winter you will not get flowers, as the flower on last years growth, the last cut should be made in July/August. Pruning after this time will only give you foliage and will also rob early pollinators like bees an important source of food, when nothing much else is flowering the bees rely on these flowers for their first food.

The deciduous shrub can grow up to 10 feet tall and belongs to the olive family Oleacea. It prefers sun or partial shade and will grow in most soils. It can also be propagated by semi-hardwood cuttings.

If you have some Forsythia growing in your garden, take a couple of snips, pop it in a beautiful vase and share on social media tagging me! @bohoraspberry, I would love to see your creations too.

Thanks for stopping by,

Bo x

SPOTLIGHT ON: Forsythia Forsythia x intermedia 'Lynwood Variety' has to be one of my favourite spring flowers. I mean just look at it, nothing else required in this vase at all, it speaks for itself.