Hannah Genders reveals what she’ll be planting this month

I can’t believe it’s almost a whole year since we built a garden at The Malvern Spring Show. When I think back to this time last year, I was dashing around trying to pull all the elements together, the garden was well on the way to being finished and we were checking all the planting to go in ready for the show.

The lovely thing is this garden had a life beyond the show and was replanted at Hillers Farm Shop near Alcester. It has now had almost a full year in its permanent home. It all seems to have settled in rather well and now looks like it has always been there. As we wanted this show garden to continue as a vegetable display garden, each season it will be replanted as a demonstration of how to grow produce.

 The garden was designed to be modular with ideas for small spaces that can be taken away and used in even the tiniest gardens. The beds, built from locally sourced wood, have overwintered well and I was down in the garden recently digging them over and putting in seeds and small plug plants for this summer.

The small borders near the main patio will have salad crops in. I’ve sown a mixture of red and green lettuce ‘cut and come again’ varieties that will be picked out and keep growing back. To show how successional cropping works, we’ll sow these every few weeks for acontinuous supply throughout the summer. I’ve also sown some perpetual spinach which is good value in any vegetable garden; like the lettuce, the more you pick it, the more seems to keep growing.

 The other four foot square beds will have a hazel structure put in place and beans growing up them. I’ve grown these in the greenhouse and we’ll plant them out in late May when all danger from late frosts has passed. For the runner beans we’ve saved some seed from our bean plants at the show. This is a white runner bean, the seed of which has been saved by a gardening friend of mine for more than 25 years. The original variety has long since been forgotten but they seem to come true and produce a good crop.

For the French beans on the other hazel structure, I’m supplying a lovely purple bean called Cosse Violette. This is an old fashioned heirloom bean dating back to 1868, it has lovely purple flowers and succulent pods that taste fantastic.

 Under the bean plants I’ll plant courgettes, again later in the month when the frost has gone for the summer. Courgettes do well under bean plants; they don’t mind the dappled shade and seem to like the more sheltered environment. This is one of those ideas to try if you only have a small plot to grow vegetables in as it saves a lotof space. The two courgettes we’ll display this year are the yellow courgette Parador and the green courgette Zucchini, which is very prolific. They also do well in pots as long as you feed them during the growing season.

Herbs were a key feature in the Malvern show garden and also feature in the rebuilt garden at Hillers. Chives, mixed thymes and coriander all feature along with lavender across the front border. Although lavender doesn’t have a culinary use, it is invaluable in the vegetable or fruit garden for providing colour and scent, but also for the flowers attracting much needed bees and beneficial insects.

Edible flowers will feature in our summer garden, both in the borders and in pots. Bergamot is a beautiful flower, again loved by bees and stunning to have alongside any herbs or salad crops. Nasturtiums grow prolifically in most gardens. Let them trail over the edge of borders or pots. They can also be eaten raw by adding them to salads as they have a peppery taste, or deep fry them in tempura batter – delicious.

 So for some good ideas on growing, visit the garden at Hillers Farm Shop. You’ll find it in the bottom right hand corner of the flower garden and do take the time to look at the rest of the garden as the beautiful rose garden will just be coming into bloom.