Tag: passiflora

My Beautiful Neighbourhood

1 Comment on My Beautiful Neighbourhood

Short version:

Photos of things in gardens and on the streets in my local area that show what grows well in urban gardens, how food can be incorporated into the front garden, how structures can be used and a couple of great ideas for making the most of your space.

E.g. It’s bananas that there is a banana tree here. I’ve not seen fruit on this tree but even it’s existence just makes me incredibly happy.

So… we moved to Streatham for a few reasons:

  • It was further out of London and less polluted. This is a great link if you want live information on pollutants in your local area, right down to the individual streets. https://www.londonair.org.uk/LondonAir/nowcast.aspx
  • We got much more house for the money.
  • We could actually afford a garden. A real one. That has soil.
  • Schools. Turns out a lot of the people who have moved to our area of Streatham have also moved for the schools.

What I didn’t realise until after we moved was how friendly the neighbourhood would be. We actually know, as in have real conversations, with people who live on our road. There’s even a Whatsapp group. I’ve even met people in 3 of the houses in the road parallel. In my 20 years of London living, I never knew such a thing was possible.

As well as the friendly natives, I absolutely love some of the gardens that I’ve seen. So today I’d like to share some of these wonderful things.

If anyone recognises any of these pictures as their property and you’d rather not have the photo up – please do let me know and I’ll take it down.

I love it when people use all the space they can, even in the walls. In the photos below, the dividing walls have planters built in:

  • These geraniums are not edible, but they do thrive well in the small space. Herbs would do just as well.
  • A planter can ensure there is the ericaceous (acidic) soil that raspberries thrive in.
  • This one has rosemary, sage, currants and bay.

I love it when people don’t resign themselves to flora-less gardens when they don’t have bare earth:

  • Herbs and flowers in lovely pots on a low wall
  • Much of this garden was edible so I think this is taro.
  • This basement flat has large hanging baskets on the wall.
  • None of this is edible, but I wanted to include it because it is truly beautiful!
  • Rosemary, strawberries, lavender, pansies and mint.
  • In these pots there is a pear tree, currants, raspberries, strawberries, chard, potatoes, tomatoes, some sort of lettuce, coriander, spinach and possibly a few other things I don’t recognise.

I’ve also seen some very clever planters:

  • This planter is on wheels!
  • This old chest of drawers was full of dead strawberry plants. I think the problem with this is that the drawers don’t retain moisture.
  • This looks like it may have been an old staircase, though the steps are very tall so it may have been purpose built for these strawberries.

Not only are there planters in the gardens but sometimes in Streatham you see planters on pavements with signs saying you can help yourself to the herbs. Unfortunately I don’t have any photos of those planters, but I love that these are planters just on the streets:

  • These are always full of lovely flowers.
  • These two (there’s another in the distance) have strawberries and an assortment of herbs

Sometimes things make it into the streets by themselves. I make a mental note of plants like these. If they seed themselves happily in cracks, then there’s no reason why I wouldn’t also be able to grow them in my own garden.

  • This is a melon plant of some sorts growing in a woody area.
  • This is a pavement tomato

Sometimes they just spill onto the streets from the gardens.

  • One of these two rosemary bushes is taller than me. In summer they (and the berry bush between them) are just humming with bees.
  • This lavender is taller than me too. In summer this is also a bee haven. When it’s not busy with bees, the little one and I sometimes brush our hands through it as we walk by.

Here are some more big bushes/trees. I am often surprised by how big a tree you can actually fit in London gardens if it’s slow growing enough and not too close to the building:

  • This is a citrus of some sorts.
  • This fig tree smells amazing.
  • I made a new friend when she was scrumping damsons from here.
  • This is a cherry plum on the street.
  • This is a hazelnut / cobb on the street too.
  • There seems to be lots of figs around. This is another large one beside a bay tree.
  • This might be two different apple varieties grafted onto one tree as there are red/green apples on the left and pale green on the right.
  • This olive tree is laden with little green olives and the bay beside it matches it in size.

Those trees, being so large, would have taken many years to establish. There are some shorter term ways to utilise the vertical space:

  • This eco friendly wooden arch has, what looks like, a yellow cherry plum trained up it.
  • This gate provides access to garages of two houses, so training a grape vine at this height is a fantastic non intrusive use of space.
  • This passiflora growing over this gate in a shady patch has edible orange fruits. I also love the bike shed for using the space.
  • This is another passiflora trained up the sunny front wall of a house. There are also currants growing below.

There’s also ways to make the most of any space lower down:

  • Curved wall, straight fence = space for one climbing nasturtium.
  • This pathway to the front door is lined with a strawberry patch.
  • Hidden behind a hedge are runner beans, peas, oregano, basil and lavender.

You can also incorporate edibles into hedging:

  • Olive tree hedging.
  • In amongst the traditional hedging is a grape vine.
  • Not exactly hedging, but this grapevine coming over the wall, if left for a couple of years, will make this whole wall green.
  • An espalier trained apple tree makes an interesting edible hedge.
  • This is another apple tree with less leaves so you can see the structure when it’s been trained.

Of course my favourite option is to go all out and just grow edibles in the front garden.

  • There is passiflora over the front of the house, artichokes, tomatoes, gooseberries and sorrel as well as a whole load of flowers. There’s probably other edibles that I didn’t spot too. I decided that chasing my 4 year old to ensure her safety was kinda more important than being inquisitive.
  • A whole garden of raspberries and roses.
  • The raspberries have escaped via underground runners and have made these bonus plants through paving cracks.
  • A garden full of kale.
  • In the local park there is a children’s centre and they’re growing tomatoes with raspberries hiding behind them. In the same garden there are also plenty of herbs. Opposite the garden, in the park, there have been some apple, pear and cherry trees planted this year.

These photos (so far) are all just things you can see from the road so I love to imagine that there’s a plethora of BACK gardens in the area that hide edible treasures and ingenious gardening ideas. Of course I couldn’t get photos without trespassing and probably jail time. I don’t think the defence ‘I’m just really really nosy’ would stand up in court. However… there was a 5th birthday party in a centre that had a fantastic vegetable patch in the back that excited me much more than the bouncy castle!

  • In this garden there were tomatoes and nasturtiums….
  • …sweetcorn, runner beans, borage, calendula, onions, radishes and brassicas.

Finally, just to show that I don’t have a one track mind and can also appreciate a good wild flower meadow:

This beauty is from another park. Though it’s only a fairly small space, this park also has ponds, quite a few trees, a very nice mural and lots of benches to sit and enjoy the visual feast.

Actually… I think I might be lying. I love this wild flower meadow because it’s great for bees…and well…. bees are important for anyone who wants to grow their own food. Turns out I really do just have a one track mind. It’s not dirty, but it does think about the composition of dirt quite a bit.

Passiflora Caerulea

4 Comments on Passiflora Caerulea

Short version:

I chose this passion flower because it was frost hardy perennial climber that grew in some shade, was evergreen and provided edible fruit. It has done brilliantly in my garden and has amazing flowers followed by orange, egg shaped fruit. 

Passiflora / passion flowers are gorgeous as both a plant and a flower. The whole structure with its many dangling vines can transform a bare surface, whilst the individual flowers look incredibly exotic. There are many passion flowers of varying colours – but you may have noticed, I’m only interested if a plant is edible. I’m therefore, only talking about passiflora caerulea because it ticks all of my boxes.

  • My little one loves them too. Luckily, it produces a large amount of flowers so I don’t mind if she picks some of the ones growing more in shade as they’re unlikely to ripen into edible fruit.

Flowers

I really think they are stunning. It has a long flowering season. It can begin flowering (here in London) in late May and can continue till September. This will depend on the weather from year to year. The bees love them, and I often see them buzzing around the vines. This is of course also important for pollination so that the flowers will set fruit.

Fruit

Of course, it would be wonderful to grow passiflora edulis as these are the passion fruit that we recognise from the shops. Unfortunately, these wouldn’t survive the winter outdoors (I have neither the space nor the patience for greenhouse growing) and it certainly wouldn’t be warm enough in the UK alfresco for the fruits to fully develop. The caerulea is a decent substitution. The fruits are a gorgeous orange colour with a size and shape similar to a hen’s egg. These are edible – WHEN RIPE. When not ripe enough the fruit can cause tummy troubles. The fruit does need a good summer to ripen. A word of warning though – only the pulpy seeds are edible. The rest of the fruit should be discarded and the rest if the plant is also toxic. If this sounds worrying then to put your mind at ease – or maybe give food for thought – potato leaves are also toxic. Potatoes, along with tomatoes and aubergines are part of the nightshade family and none of the leaves of those plants should be eaten either. With any unusual edibles it’s a good idea to do your own research and read websites that you trust for information. I think that the Royal Horticultural Society is a good resource.

  • They’re soft enough to tear apart with fingers
  • The seeds are inside a thin pouch
  • Just these red seeds are edible. I’m afraid you won’t be getting much.
  • You can see these ones changing colour
  • It is still producing flowers, even as the fruit ripens. Chances are this flower’s fruit will not get a long enough sunny period to ripen.

Taste is also important. I won’t lie. They don’t taste much like the passion fruit we’re used to – but it tastes OK. Nothing amazing, but pleasant enough.

Vertical gardening

  • You can see the tendrils winding themselves round my wire frame. They will also happily entwine themselves round the stems of all nearby shrubbery.

It uses tendrils to climb up anything that will support it. In my garden it climbs the blackberries and the grape vine. It’s woven itself though the blackberry bushes and has resurfaced again about 4m away from the original plant. 

The tendrils are great because this is not a plant that will damage brickwork, unlike ivy – which tunnels roots into mortar and is impossible to remove. I did mistakenly allow ivy to climb up a house once because I thought it was beautiful. When we came to move, I spent about 10 hours trying to remove the ivy. I yanked, scraped, scrubbed and brushed, but you could still see the debris of tiny roots entrenched in all available pores.

The climbing also means that it takes up a small footprint, which is a bonus for small gardens. You could have it scramble over a bike shed or to add colour and interest to a fence or wall.

Hardy perennial in British weather

The different varieties of passiflora vary in how hardy they are. Caerulea will survive outdoors fine and ours didn’t seem to be bothered by frost. In our garden in London it can be evergreen. It is deciduous to evergreen depending on how warm the local area is. Being evergreen means that it has made a great living screen by our fence. It has hopefully given our neighbours some protection from my child’s mooning (yes, that’s not a typo – but she is only 3 – and getting naked on private property seems to be her thing) and screaming (something else I think is also connected to being 3).  

It also seems to do fine in shade. Its roots and the first 4 feet of the plant spends most of the time in shade. If you’re looking for edible fruit though, you’ll want it to grow in decent amounts of sun.

It returns year after year, despite freezing conditions. It does follow the adage: first year sleep, second year creep, third year leap – or it did for me anyway. First year it was a sorry looking thing with a few scraggly vines. The second year it provided a bit of privacy and one orange fruit.

  • This was in the first year. You can see the leaves poking out to the top right of the grape vine. The grape vines were to grow over the pergola and the passiflora was supposed to fill out the frame behind
  • This was early in the second year, before it put on much growth.

This being the third year it covers a good 2 square metres or so. It has wonderfully flexible vines so I could weave it in and out of the frame however I liked. It also has about 20 or so fruit which are now all turning orange. With our current blackberry canes going mental and a grape vine in the middle, it is a little difficult to see where one plant ends and the other begins.

  • Behind the bamboo cane is a vine of the passiflora. It is about 4m from it’s roots…
  • …which are right of the wooden post. You can see the little orange dots of fruit.

Doesn’t need looking after

In South Africa it counts as an invasive species that takes over indigenous plant life. I haven’t read anything that makes this plant a cause for concern in the UK. It doesn’t propagate particularly easily here, and I have never seen it anywhere in the wild. This does mean that it grows brilliantly, even with plenty of neglect. I’ve read that it in fact does best when allowed to get a little unruly and not kept too neat. They do grow to be quite large plants, though some patience is required in early years. When the plant is in its first couple of years and doesn’t look like much, don’t be tempted to fill in the space (like I did – doh!) with other perennials. If you want something vertical you could grow some peas, beans or maybe a cucamelon or another annual to fill in the gaps because this passiflora really will fill out.

This is an arch in Vézénobres in France. In July the fruit was already ripe and it looked stunning. It seemed quite a popular plant in the local area.

It’s vigorous enough to cover a surface – but not so overly aggressive, like ivy, that you’ll continuously need to hack half of it down just to keep it in check. It’s easy enough to remove whole vines if you do need to keep it small. Pinching out the growing tips of the vines can help it to branch more.  

  • It’s pretty cool as a pressed flower too!

If you’re looking to grow something that tastes amazing, I’m afraid this probably isn’t it. I’ve decided that there are still plenty of other reasons to grow these and I’ll continue to do so until I decide I need the real estate for something else. That something else is going to have to have all the bonuses of climbing, being hardy, being evergreen, be able to thrive on neglect, be bee friendly, be beautiful and then taste pretty wicked in order to trump passiflora caerulea.

Things kids can do with flowers

3 Comments on Things kids can do with flowers

Short version:

Pick them, eat them, press them and bathe in them. It’s safer to do all these things with edible flowers to avoid poisoning or dermatitis. Beware of even the ubiquitous daffodils!

Pick them

The harder thing is stopping my 3 year old from picking them. We’ve made it a blanket rule that she can’t pick flowers beyond our garden without checking with me first. This is both out of common courtesy and for safety. Please be warned that there are many common flowers that are poisonous or have noxious chemicals. Bluebells, snowdrops, hyacinths, crocus and daffodils are flowers often seen in gardens, but they all contain toxins. When we first moved into our house my little one took a shine to the daffodils. I didn’t think anything of letting her pick and play with them – like I did as a child in my own parents’ garden. She developed a rash where she had rubbed it on her skin. After a bit of research I found that daffodils have calcium oxalate crystals in their sap which irritate the skin – something well known to daffodil pickers and florists. We grow all flowers that are safe to touch. The next challenge was to teach her which of the flowers would turn into fruit and was therefore off limits.

We pretty much continually have a glass on the kitchen table that has the kid’s latest pickings. It’s good for her to get to know the local flora and she likes the colours and smells and textures. She has also learnt to exercise caution as even edible flowers, like borage and roses, can have defence mechanisms like little prickles and thorns.

Eat them!

  • Artichokes
  • Borage – taste a bit like cucumber raw
  • Nasturtiums are quite spicy
  • Winter purslane eating is very much encouraged
  • Apple flowers are off limits

It took a while to ensure that she only picks the safe things to graze on. Whilst we grow mostly edibles (we have grown sweet peas on the roof out of her reach and we also grow star jasmine – both for the fragrance) it’s worth nothing that edibles like tomatoes and potatoes have poisonous leaves, passiflora caerulea does have edible fruit, but the leaves, flowers and unripe fruit are poisonous, and asparagus has poisonous berries.

She loves the flowers from borage, winter purslane, mint, dill and basil, though to be honest these last 2 barely make it to flower as she also loves eating the leaves. With nasturtiums she will pinch off the nectar containing cone to suck. She’s not keen on the cornflowers, calendula, watercress, coriander or brassica flowers when they grow. She loves the artichokes and chard flowers when cooked. This is the first year that we’re trying to grow violets, red clover, daisies, chamomile and bellflower in the lawn. I’ll have to let you know how they fare and how tasty they are (or aren’t).

In addition to education on what is edible, it’s important that they learn that flowers may sometimes be covered in pesticides so they cannot go around eating flowers outside your own home environment.

It sounds like the risk isn’t worth it but any adult who forages had to start learning it at some point. I believe it’s important for our kids (and everyone) to make the connection between what they eat and how it’s produced. With our little one sometimes she eats enough borage and winter purslane flowers (and leaves) that I don’t have to worry about her vegetable intake.

Press them

This was something we did as kids. Life is very different these days. Our kids are initiated into technology so early. I won’t lie (please don’t judge me), my one was already tapping away on my phone by her 3rd birthday. So, it’s nice to do activities with her that I did during my own childhood. You just need to arrange them between pieces of paper (something that is a little absorbent is best), enclose that in a heavy book, stack more books on top and leave for about 2 weeks.

  • Place some absorbent paper in the pages of a heavy book
  • Lay your flowers down
  • Add a weight. A small child is less reliable than a stack of other heavy books
  • After a week or so they look like this…
  • …or this
  • Fleshy flowers like passion flower will need about 2 weeks minimum.
  • Little one loves to make cards
  • This was for my birthday.

Bathe in them

My little one has eczema that stems from allergies. This means a bath every night in plain old water with a soap substitute but sometimes to make it interesting we’ll throw in something from the garden. There are plenty of things that look and/or smell good. Here’s where you must do a bit of research and exercise caution (see details about daffodils above). Generally, we follow the rule, if you can eat it, you can probably bathe in it and don’t go overboard. If unsure put a bloom or two in for the first bath. Excess may cause issues (like a bath with half of my mint patch would certainly cause eye irritation, if not skin irritation) and besides I’d like to keep some of my flowers in the garden.

  • Cornflowers and mint
  • calendula and mint
  • rose and rosemary
  • lavender with a couple of drops of food colouring.
  • A strainer like this…
  • … will keep your pipes from getting clogged

Bee Happy

So as a last thing, it’s quite nice for our little one to get to know about bees, how amazing they are and how much we rely on them for pollination. She’s learnt not to harm them or be scared of them and she’s rather fond of them.

  • bumble bee visiting our lavender
  • don’t worry… not actually a hornet… it’s a hornet mimic hoverfly which is another pollinator