National Gardening Week and Gardens of the Nation

This week is National Gardening Week (16- 22 April) - a fab week to get the Nation growing and to celebrate gardens brought to you by the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS). As a gardener (albeit a rather amateur one) and a blogger I thought I should spread the word as they have organised some great events up and down the country.

I was going to use this post to finally tell our allotment (or at the moment non allotment) story but the post has turned out rather long so I thought I would make this week into a series of garden posts on Rollercoaster Mum to celebrate National Gardening Week - one of which will be our allotment story. I've missed Monday but never mind - I'm always late!

The RHS have different themes for each day of National Gardening Week. Yesterday was Gardening SOS with all sorts of helpful advice on gardening problems (really should have joined in with that one - we have lots of problems!) and today is the launch of Gardens of the Nation. A photographic project (now you didn't think I was going to do a post without a photo did you!?) where the RHS is asking garden owners all over the UK to submit a photo of their garden to help them build up a picture of the UK's domestic gardens.

This is my chance (and yours) to become part of gardening history! To submit your photo all you have to do is email it to gardensofthenation@rhs.org.uk or upload it to a Flickr group. The pictures will be collated for the RHS Lindley Library archives to create a historical record of gardens today. The picture doesn't have to be taken literally today - it can be any taken in the last year.

So now to the photo - which one to use? I guess it should be the whole garden if possible. Now our garden has been quite scruffy for the past couple of years and I haven't taken that many photos of it. It is quite small and with 2 kids and 4 chickens it quite often does not look it's best - but I guess that's the point. It's also why we need an allotment! Mostly I have taken pictures of small corners of it that do look nice like this one.

Or of the veg patch

But maybe I should use this one of the garden in the rain this morning

Or maybe this one from the sunshine this afternoon. Neither of them brilliant photos but they do show what our garden is really like - washing line, chicken house, bags of feed, kids scarecrow and all!

And there is also the front garden of course (taken just after the rain this morning)

I suppose if I email I could send them all and they can choose!


I shall be posting more on gardens during the week - including the allotment story (and maybe some more pictures!) Other themes the RHS have during the week include careers in horticulture, gardening and the environment and get kids growing. As well as the themes all the RHS gardens and many others up and down the country are holding special days, offers and competitions. For more information check out the National Gardening Week website.

Here's to some more on gardens tomorrow!

By the way this is not a sponsored post nor am I being paid or in anyway connected with the RHS I just think it's a fab idea.