Hello!
Welcome! I am a thirty-something year old living in Cambridgeshire with my husband (Papa Pea) and son (Petit Pois). I have a real love of gardening and plants, instilled in me from a young age. When I am not working my day job or spending time with my family, I am invariably found in a corner of the garden or lost deep in a flower bed.
My story
How Three Peas Gardening came to be...
Growing up in a converted 1950s bungalow on a plot of land in the fenlands meant that I was hardened to the the cold, wet weather of the UK from a young age. The icy chill of the whipping British winds is quickly warmed by my fond memories of peacefully weeding our flowerbeds, working the vegetable patch as a child alongside my father, and fresh September weekends spent making home-made cider with my parents and sisters. During the Summer, daisy-chain development was a weekly race against the lawn mower, resulting in apple trees adorned with fine floral laces wrapped around their trunks, as though in peaceful protest to the destruction of the mower blades. Of course, as a child, you see the weeding, cider-making, and grass composting as a chore, and only later do you appreciate the scent of the warm Spring soil and the flash of the sunshine reflected in the trowel blade taking you back a couple of decades within the blink of an eye.
As I grew up and left home, I missed the luxury of having a garden, but hadn't realised this fact until my husband and I managed to buy a little house with a very modest plot of our own. It was then that I realised how much I enjoyed the freedom of designing the garden: I loved the process of playing with the patchy rectangle of scrubby grass and filling it with plants, while nursing a small lawn into a passable green carpet to cushion small baby feet and reduce the risk of skinned knees. No longer was I restricted to my parents' garden plans and plot, as I was as a child; I now had a new gardening adventure to share with my own son.
It was with sadness that we left that first bijou landscaping adventure. However, we were moving on to renovate a 1930s semi-detached house and garden in Cambridge, thrilled to be upscaling our garden plot and brimming with new ideas. Feeling ready for the challenge, we tackled the overgrown plot, stripping endless brambles, ivy, and nettles repeatedly -- we all know that one weeding session would be laughable for eliminating such bold and brash perennial weeds as these -- and eventually created a sting-free haven for our son, complete with a treehouse in the old Prunus, a willow den filled with ferns and Hosta plants, and our very first frog pond. If we thought that leaving our first little plot was hard, it was even more challenging to say goodbye to this creation, but (once again) we were moving on to new, exciting adventures; this time, we were finally moving back into the countryside. Village life again, at last.
These days, we are living in a lovely rural village in Cambridgeshire, surrounded by friendly neighbours, beautiful countryside, and incredible wildlife. It is a joy to watch the birds of prey circling over the adjacent fields, and to greet our equine neighbour in the meadow next door when he is grazing in the afternoons. We have three beautiful Ash trees at the bottom of our garden, where we can shade ourselves on a lazy, sunny Sunday afternoon, and a garden that wraps around our house, providing us with plenty of space to get creative. Here, I hope to document the design and development of this garden (currently all grass at the time of writing, courtesy of the previous owners) and track our latest horticultural adventure. It is certainly true that no two gardens are the same; each is as individual as the people, plot and plants at its core. Let's see what this new garden blossoms into...