Growing our own: notes from the tunnel

The polytunnel behind the studio started as an overflow bench and has quietly become half our supply chain. This spring roughly one plant in two that we set out began life here — sown in autumn, pricked out through winter, and grown hard so it arrives in a border ready to work.

We grow what suits us to grow: the perennials we use in quantity and hate to buy small — astrantia, geums, hardy geraniums, sanguisorba — and the short-lived self-seeders like verbena and ammi that a design needs by the tray, not by the pot. Home-grown plants land in fresh compost days after leaving the bench, and establishment has been noticeably better than anything that has spent a season on a sales stand.

We still buy plenty in. Trees, shrubs and roses come from the nurseries that do them properly, and grasses arrive from a grower in Herefordshire who has forgotten more about them than we will ever know. Growing everything would make us a nursery; we would rather stay a studio with a very good bench.

And the crop we have given up on: delphiniums. Three springs, three sowings, three slug massacres. Some plants are best bought tall enough to defend themselves — and some defeats are best admitted in writing.