Garden

A Gardener’s Year

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The arrival of the Gardener’s Year Journal by Studio Wald has got us dreaming of the year ahead. The journal features a bold monochromatic abstract plant patterned cover and with open-dated month to view pages divided into weeks and a place to write in the month, you can make a note of all your planting dates and garden reminders, such as when your seedlings are ready to be potted-out or your blooms are due a feed. Plus there are lots of extra pages such as notes, shopping list, garden planning and weights and measures. Here are a few ideas from Of Cabbages and Kings.

January

Start planning the year. Use this time to get an overview of what you want to achieve in your garden. Keep track of what you want to plant, planting dates and harvest times.

Gardener’s Year Journal – £5.95

February

Solitary Bees nest in the spring so make sure you have a home waiting for them like these Bee Bricks. The Bee Brick provides a stylish urban nesting site for red mason bees and leaf cutter bees among others, and make a lovely addition to any garden or allotment.

Bee Brick – £30

March

Start sewing your seeds in early spring with the help of this handy Paper Pot Press. Paper pots are made from strips of newspaper rolled around and shaped by the press. Fill with your growing medium and plant with seeds.

Paper Pot Press – £14.50

April

This is a good time of year to give your houseplants a once over. Re-pot them if necessary and trim off any dead or dying leaves. The Houseplant Care Cards are a boxed gift set containing 35 cards packed full of advice and tips for botanical success indoors.

Houseplant Care Cards – £12.95

May

Start planting out your seedlings and take inspiration from this five colour screen print by artist Tom Berry. A vine of bright pinks and reds entwines around a teal figure as they are planting it into the ground. The painterly mark making of the figure’s body compliments the crisp outline of the vine leaves, creating a joyful print and a celebration of nature.

Garden Man II – £65

June

In the warm weather plants start to grow quickly, especially the unwanted ones. Keep on top of your weeding and deadheading. Or embrace a wild mass of plants like in Ashley Amery‘s print Ponds and Plants. A surreal waterscape of wiggling weeds and brightly coloured flora and fauna.

Ponds and Plants – £165

July

Your garden is alive and thriving, but so are others. Use this time and the summer weather to explore. Hoxton Mini Press have put together a selection of the best parks and green spaces London has to offer. A tough choice in a city that has 3,000 parks! This little guide is perfect for finding the ideal picnic spot or place for a walk. From central London to some outer boroughs and detailing 50 locations, you will find a new green space to fall in love with.

An Opinionated Guide To London Green Spaces – £9.95

August

As some plants finish flowering you can let them go to seed, providing you with seeds for next year’s planting. This Seed Collecting Kit has all you need to harvest, categorise and plant your seeds in one handy tin.

Seed Collecting Kit – £15.99

September

As fruits and vegetables start to ripen, now is the time to cook and enjoy them. Use this Recipe Journal to keep track of treasured family recipes or ones you swap with friends. The journal also includes a handy weights and measurements page at the back.

Recipe Journal – £8.95

October

Autumn approaches and plants begin to die back and trees shed their leaves. Keep your garden tidy by collecting them up and you can even make leaf mould for next year. This painterly rendition of an Autumn Leaf by Gavin Dobson is a four layer screen print in rich autumnal tones.

Autumn Leaf – £225

November

During the winter it’s even more important to feed garden birds. This stylish Birdball Seed Feeder is made in the UK from slipcast clay, this simple design is frost resistant and offers safe, year-round feeding for birds such as tits, sparrows, finches, woodpeckers and nuthatches.

Birdball Seed Feeder – £59.95

December

There is not a lot happening in the garden in December so hunker down, dream of the year to come and do a bit of plant research with this beautiful The Botanical City book. Inspired by William Curtis’ Flora Londinesis and illustrated with exquisite 18th century artworks, it reveals the hidden secrets of plants and flowers growing on your doorstep through up-to-date information, long forgotten folklore and herbal traditions.

The Botanical City – £25

OC&K Curates: Nurturing Nature

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An air of optimism is needed when times are hard, and that optimism can be found in the smallest of places. Be it a windowsill or an expanse of lawn, it’s important to connect with nature wherever we can. Bright flowers blooming around us, or insects flying past our window are reasons to bring joy into our life and we can encourage this joy for us and others around us.

With this blog post we bring you the garden. Here at Of Cabbages and Kings with have a variety of gifts and garden themed ideas from prints and garden accessories to ways of encouraging wildlife into your backyard.

We all know that bees are important for our ecosystem. So let’s help with the pollination of plants and crops. But did you know that there are over 200 species of solitary bees? A great way to provide a home for the these vital insects are Bee Bricks from Green&Blue. Coming in a variety of sizes they are perfect for a patio, garden wall or balcony. Solitary bees use the small nooks and crannies to lay their eggs. A perfectly designed contemporary home for bees in a modern, clean-cut world where their natural habitats are dwindling.

Small Bee Block by Green&Blue – £18.75

Bee Brick by Green&Blue – £30.00

This attractive Bee Friendly Tea Towel is sure to become a gardener’s best friend. A collaboration with Friends of the Earth and homewares designer Stuart Gardiner, it contains a guide to essential flowers that encourage bees and pollinating insects into your garden.

Bee Friendly Tea Towel by Stuart Gardiner – £12

Kew is one of the world’s greatest gardens. It houses the largest and most diverse botanical and mycological collections, while providing scientific research into conservation. Caitlin Parks has produced this multi layered screen print in a colourful collage style of the tropical plants and grand greenhouses. A cheerful print celebrating one of the most established and visited collections of plants from across the globe.

Kew Gardens by Caitlin Parks – £120

Being organised in the garden is a must when it comes to seeds. You don’t want to mix up your courgettes with your cornflowers! This seed collecting kit from Creamore Mill has everything you need to collect, store, plant and record your seeds. Envelopes and a pencil for keeping a record, dibber for planting seeds and wooden labels for marking what you have planted and where. If you are conscious to reduce plastic use in the garden, with this Paper Pot Press you can make recyclable and biodegradable newspaper pots for starting seedlings. These pots can be planted straight into the ground minimising damage to the roots of young plants.

Seed Collecting Kit by Creamore Mill – £14.50

Paper Pot Press by Creamore Mill – £12.50

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This innovative bird feeder by Green&Blue is a stylish way to complete a modern garden. Its clean and simple design adds a contemporary feature to any out door space, while also offering year-round feeding for birds such as tits, sparrows, finches, woodpeckers and nuthatches.

Birdball Seed Feeder by Green&Blue – £55

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This second print by Caitlin Parks is perfect for amateur twitchers. A limited edition screen print, British Birds is in a wood-cut style and illustrates some of our most popular garden visitors.

British Birds by Caitlin Parks – £35

Maybe your little bit of green space are the houseplants that decorate your home. These 3D printed mid-century modern style planters from Studio Nilli are made from bioplastic. Tall legged pots are perfect for plants that grow and trail like vines, devils ivy and string of pearls.

Tall White Legged Planter by Studio Nilli – £35

These Houseplant Care Cards are the ultimate guide to growing happy plants – you can’t fail! A boxed gift set containing 35 cards packed full of advice and tips for botanical success indoors.

House Plant Care Cards by Another Studio – £12.95

And what better way to celebrate your green fingered achievements than with these Plant Awards! Featuring: Dream Plant, Surviving and Still Alive rosettes.

Plant Award – Dream Plant Ornament – £5.75

Plant Award – Surviving Plant Ornament – £5.75

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This peaceful image of a gardener, captures a sense of meditation at work. Garden Man is a 7 colour screen print by artist Tom Berry and forms part of Tom Berry’s Daily Rites Series which explores the ritual of daily activities.

Garden Man by Tom Berry – £75

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Kingdom Under A Hat /// A Tour Of Factory Press

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We’re very excited at Of Cabbages and Kings, to be hosting the launch of the latest edition from Factory Press Kingdom Under A Hat on Thursday 5th March, and last week I cycled over to Clapton to meet the creator – artist, designer and printmaker Liz Loveless. The book is the 9th published by Factory Press and I visited Liz at her studio and shop on the site of a disused ice cream factory just off Chatsworth Road to discuss the story behind it.

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A few years ago Liz had been asked to do some illustrations based upon the story of The Rock Garden of Chandigarh in India: A secret world built entirely from rubbish scavenged by it’s creator Nek Chand. This ‘Kingdom’ as Chand liked to refer to it, consisted of man-made interlinked waterfalls and other sculptures made of scrap and waste (bottles, glasses, bangles, tiles, ceramic pots, sinks, electrical waste, etc.) which were placed in walled paths.

The hidden garden had been built in a gorge Chand believed to be wasteland outside the city and no one found it for 19 years. It was discovered by the authorities in 1975, by which time, it had grown into a 12-acre complex of interlinked courtyards, each filled with hundreds of pottery-covered concrete sculptures of dancers, musicians, and animals. A battle then commenced to save the garden from demolition and it was finally granted public space status in 1976.

In January 2014 Liz had the opportunity to visit the garden herself and once again felt inspired by the story of Nek Chand and his secret rock garden. She started gathering discarded wrappers and other paper scraps from the pathways around the garden itself, which she bought back home to use and interweave into her own expression of the rock garden story. These collaged, enlarged sweet wrappers now decorate the end papers of her book.

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Liz often combines collage techniques with hand-pulled silkscreen to create the illusion of texture over a flat surface. Her books start life as A1 sheets of paper screen printed in 3 colours on both sides and finish as limited editions hand bound in cloth or card. Kingdom Under A Hat will be an edition of 650. These large sheets are then guillotined into double pages, arranged in order, folded with the bone folder, measured, hole punched and hand sewn to form the body of the book.

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As I watched Liz at each step in the book making process I began to truly understand the love and craftsmanship that goes into constructing each and every one. The next stage was the nipping press. I’d been eying up this beautiful object since I’d entered the studio and couldn’t wait to see Liz put it into action. Liz cases the books in grey card, glues the end papers and covers the spine with bright coral book cloth. The nipping press will only hold 4 books at a time. Cellophane is placed between the pages to prevent the ink from sticking and the books are left overnight, sealing the endpapers to the cover and pressing the pages completely flat. By morning the new books are ready to be numbered and added to the edition.

On Thursday 5th March we’ll be hosting a very special evening to launch the new book. Liz will be at the shop with so please join us on a journey to the magical rock garden of Chandigarh, see Liz’s photo collage installation including a life size bicycle and watch a short supporting animation as well as grab your copy of this beautiful limited edition, hand-pulled silk screen printed, hardback, hand-bound book. There’ll probably be drink or two going round too!

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