Abundant Flowers Tour in Vegetable Garden

Abundant Flowers Tour in Vegetable Garden
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About Us.
Byther Farm is a small organic homestead, being designed and managed using permaculture practices. We aim for self-sufficiency in fruit and vegetables for increased self reliance and better resilience to the modern world. I recognise that we are unlikely to be truly self sufficient, but do the best we can. I share our home with my loving husband, Mr J.
We are a fifty-something couple who live on a smallholding in Carmarthenshire, Wales. We are going green and creating a gentler, cleaner and more healthy life for our family.
Having had a highly successful smallholding in Monmouthshire, we hope to recreate the abundance at our new home. There will be a large organic kitchen garden with no dig gardening raised beds and young food forest in which to grown our fruit and vegetables.
We keep a few sheep and Aylesbury ducks.

Music from Epidemic Sound.

Hello. Today I want to do a bit of harvesting in the veg garden. And while I’m here, uh, as promised, I’ll do a little bit of a flower tour and let you know some of the flowers, uh, that I’ve got growing in the vegetable garden. I’m Liz Zorab and this is By the Farm. [Music] I don’t very often show you this border. It’s the one uh as I first come into the vegetable garden. It’s quite a big one with shrubs in it. Um and other stuff. Um so there’s a New Zealand flax there. This is Asa flamingo. Absolutely love this. And I’m considering moving it in the winter when it’s dormant. I have another space that I think it would be better in. Uh there’s an awful lot of this um which is figwart. It’s a wild flower. I brought it with me from my last place. I almost wish I hadn’t because it just appears everywhere and it’s a tough old plant to to get rid of. Uh and it does seem to seed itself in the most difficult awkward places, but it’s really good for attracting wasps to the garden. Uh they absolutely love the kind of almost insignificant brown flowers. It’s really hard to get a picture of them again because they’re so small. There are some pots of flowers uh waiting to go into the food forest, but I suspect that they’ve now rooted themselves into the soil here. And this is a Deszdona rose. And I got this rose, put it in here, loved it so much that that’s when I asked if we could have the standard roses. In the corner here is Asa Crimson King. It’s going to get really big eventually. Um, but for now it’s looking great. Uh, I actually quite like it to be a little bit bigger, but time will bring that. And then in the corner here, which is the first plant that I see when I come into the garden, is a rose Jeff Hamilton. It was named after the TV presenter of Gardener World. And it’s a reminder that he was the person who taught me so much about gardening uh back in the late 1970s and early 80s. Beds one and two have very few flowers in them at this time of year. But what they have got is the flowers from the Welsh bunching onions there. And there are some chundula uh which are now just selfsewn ones. But I’m more than happy to have those in there. As long as it’s not too many uh and they don’t harbor and give home for lots and lots of slugs, they’re fine. Uh there are a few few weeds uh going to flower. This is some sort of rocket by the look of it. Uh I don’t necessarily want those growing further in the garden. Things like the sweet sicily flowered earlier in the year, so they flowered in spring. Now, uh we’ve just got their seeds, which I’m happy to sprinkle around. Bed number three is absolutely buzzing with bees and wasps and other flying insects. This is a nepita, so cat mint or catnip, but it’s a white variety. The uh buds have got a pink tinge to them and then their flowers open to uh to being white with tiny little pink marks in them. I almost almost can’t pick up uh how beautiful they are because they’re so tiny. But when you zoom in with a magnifying lens, they look like tiny little orchids. Very happy with those. These aliiums are not ornamental aliums. They’re leaks. We’ve got the seed heads here from Aqualia that was out in the spring. I’ll sprinkle a few more of those around. And down here is a mauve and white hosta flower which goes really nicely with the reds of Asa blood good here. And in the front corner of this bed there is this beautiful purple manarda. Fabulous. Um and then this is thyme which is in flower and again the flowers are very pale pink almost white but not quite really pretty and you can see the same colors reflected in the aliums in the background there. Bed number four has these lovely poppy heads. These are beautiful purple poppies that were out uh earlier in the year. I’m letting them go to seed and I’ll collect the seeds. Uh here’s a white loopin. Mostly it’s gone over and I need to come out and dead head this to encourage more flowers. At the back here is uh Norshia Macedonica which is like a little uh vibrant pinky purple. Well, it’s more more like deep crimson pink. And in front of it is a pink manarda. It’s got very much a a mauve white dark pink feel to the bed here. Bed number five has uh sweet corn and scarlet kale uh in the center. Corettes at the end. And there’s also some squash plants which I put down in their pots meaning to plant them. Uh I didn’t get around to planting them and they’ve gone rooted through their pots into the ground. So I’m just going to leave those to grow. Bed number six is one of the four central beds and is choa block uh with flowers but also with herbs and plants that I can use in popyri. Um so let’s start here with a bronze fennel which is now in flower. Just like the flowers of parnip plants they attract lots of lace wings and hoverflies as well as wasps and bees. And down here was a pale white strancher. Uh now it’s uh gone to seed and I have been sprinkling the seeds quite a lot. There’s a lavender likewise gone to seed and a peony. Uh that’s flowering is over. There are some chives. These are sort of a garlicky chive. Um but they still produce those lovely purple flowers. This rose is one of four that I was given for my birthday last year. How lucky am I? I’ve always thought of standard roses as being a little bit old-fashioned. And is it because I’m getting older, or is it just that I’ve realized what a good use of space they are? So, they take up very little space in the ground. Um, and then they put all the flowers up here. It’s great cuz it’s at sort of at face height, so you get the fragrance as you walk through. These are actually really strongly fragranced. It’s lovely, but they leave plenty of space for growing things underneath. Now, um it’s a bit of a clash of color, and I’m not entirely sure I want to keep uh this Rebecca here. I’m going to go with what my father said, which was there’s no such things as a clash of colors in nature. H I’m not convinced. It’s been there for 3 years. And actually, you know, I just quite like the cheeriness of them. And then I’ve got two different manadas, a pale pink and a deep pink. And then here is geranium fam summerbore. Um it’s not usually in flower at this time of year, but I cut it back really hard. So now it’s having a sort of second flush of flowers. And the flowers are dark dark purple uh single flower. So just one row of petals. Absolutely gorgeous. And I love the way they sort of have a deeper purple than the this monaza. and they blend or or tone or whatever the right word is with the pale mana. Bed number seven is noisy to say the least. At this end there’s an esturian tree cabbage which has gond flowers. So it’s got the yellow flowers there. There’s a very pale mauve manarda and a medium to bright pink nosia macadonica. There’s plenty of oregano. Maybe it’s margaram. I can’t remember which I bought. Probably margarm. Uh but it’s got a very nice dark purple bud and mid mauve flower. Uh again there’s this white depita. Now there did used to be one over that side. Um but I lifted that and used it in a special project which I’ll tell you about in a second. I’ve actually got lots of plants in here that reflect uh the bed on the other side. Um I also have a vast quantity of rose bay willow herb which um wasn’t supposed to be in here but has made its way here. So there’s a peony, another one of the geraniums, another monardada. This time um it’s a green rather than a bronze fennel. And then round that side is um a sedum autumn joy. Now sedum have got a new name. I’ll put the botanical name up on the screen because I’m afraid for me they’ll probably always be called sedum. And then this end there’s a lovely uh pinky mauve manardada and a variegated thyme with really quite a similar color flower. Um it’s really nice and even the rose bay willow herb the color matches. It’s quite tempting to leave those ones in when it does things like that. This is a dia. Um it’s growing in a pot. I can’t remember uh which day it is. So, it’s been sitting there all summer. Uh I haven’t got it into the ground, so it’s about to flower. I’m just going to let it do its thing. And at the back of bed seven here is an echgonatia. I think this is called uh primadona white. The rose bay willow herb that’s gone to seed. And some down here uh is something else which I’m not sure what it is. So, I’ll wait till it flowers to find out. Bed number eight is a riot of color at the moment. Uh mostly yellows and whites. I’m pretty pleased with this. So this is a chop sewer greens. The reason I’ve got it in this bed is not because I sewed loads of seeds, but because the plants have gone to seed in the poly tunnel last year. Uh I put the plants into the compost heap. [Music] Obviously, it didn’t get hot enough cuz it didn’t kill off the seeds. And so in this bed, I’ve got masses of these effectively almost selfsewn except I sewed them in the compost. And there are also masses and masses of forget me knots in here that will flower next year. I’m actually going to move a lot of those because next in this bed um I’m going to put some more brasas and some leaks. And uh the one thing I do know is that slugs love hiding in amongst the forget me knots. And so I don’t want to put brassacas here in here just effectively inviting the slugs to eat them for dinner. Perhaps I should talk about the rose bay willow herb. Um I just I haven’t got to clear it this year. It’s now gone to seed again. Uh it’s going to make it 10 times harder next year. Um so hopefully this week I can come in and clear a lot of those weeds. I’m probably kidding myself if I say that. At some point I will come and clear those weeds. Um, but I think next year I’m gonna have to be much better about coming up here and clearing the pathways on a very regular basis and clearing any of them out of the beds. This year, uh, I’ve been off to quite a lot of shows and I’ve made the decision I’m probably going to go to fewer shows next year so I can actually spend more time doing what I love most, which is pottering in the garden. Bed number nine has got the brascas in it. And so here we are. bed number 10. And they’re all fairly similar because I wanted them to kind of reflect each other and almost look like one large bed, but with a few added extras in each one. So the peta is the same, but there is in fact there are two maybe three different types of flocks there. They’ve been very slow in forming clumps. Um I’m pleased to see that this year uh each one has sent up more than one stem and hopefully in a couple years time they’ll be really big clumps. This wonderful uh orange almost tangerine uh color flower. It’s a g and it’s called totally tangerine and it is the most amazing uh orange color. And this has flowered for me right around the year and we had flowers in Christmas week. It’s been literally right through winter one or two flowers and now in the summer it’s produced masses of flowers and I have been really uh vigilant about dead heading as she says uh popping the flowers off a few more. Uh mostly I’ve been round with scissors and rather than just popping the tops off I’ve taken the stems back so there aren’t lots of pointy stems. But, uh, keeping on deadheading will, uh, send a message to the plant that it hasn’t produced seeds yet and so needs to, uh, grow some more flowers, and that’s how to keep them going. Um, in uh, the corner here, we’ve got some, which flowered earlier in the year, uh, and some dicra spectalis, which I think also has a new name. I’ll put it on the screen. Uh, there are gems. There’s ocha um which is an edible but I’m using it as a ground cover. And again uh in in around the front there is some more of that GM uh fyam summer. Here we’ve got um some more manarda but this time an absolutely vivid scarlet one. This purpley leaf plant with mauve flowers. um is Pensamman digitalis and I think it’s mystic mauve but I whatever the color is uh I’ll make sure I’ve put that on the screen too. And here is a pony. It’s yellow. I think this one’s Bartzella. It’s absolutely glorious uh in the uh spring. We had 10 flowers on it this year. I can’t tell you how excited I am by that. So that’s this bed. Oh, and the other thing that’s in this bed is plenty of alchemilla mollis. The alchemilla is one of the plants that I used in uh another bed that I created recently, and that was a small show garden bed for the Royal Welsh show 2025. Hello. Uh I’m not at home today. I’m at the Royal Welsh Showground uh near Bil Wales and I’m setting up a micro garden today. [Music] So, I was invited to create a garden that’s 1.3 m by 2.6. And I’m calling it a sense and sensibility garden. And it’s inspired by my grandchildren, my grandsons, one of whom is autistic. and he likes the smell of things. He likes to touch plants. He likes the different textures and sounds of soils and mulches. And so I’m incorporating all of those ideas into this border. So here it is. It’s um it’s already uh the border is already created and I’m just starting to put in some supports to hold plants up. Now you’ll recognize a lot of these cuz they’ve come from my garden. And then there are other plants that I’ve bought and some that I’ve been given. So, here we are a few hours later and um it’s all planted up. It’s got its mulch. It’s been watered and I’m really pleased with the results. So, here’s the mulch. This is crushed welk shells. Um it’s from a Welsh company called Shell on Earth. And then we’ve got um some French lavender. Do I dead head these before the show? Maybe. But there’s some uh French lavender there and some basil um margarm. And then moving up a bit, uh there’s this rose, which is sceptered isle and that’s a David Austin rose. And here are some cosmos I grew from seed. Um I’ll leave uh links to all of these plants on my website. Um and so uh there’ll be a link in the video description to that. Uh lovely grasses which I grew from very small plants a couple of years ago. And here we have um some silver mint. So there’s actually three silver mints in this border and a nepita. Um it’s looking a bit thirsty now, but hopefully it will pick up in the next day or two as it settles in. Um but this is a white nepita rather than um a blue one. Underneath there’s an oda cologne mint, uh geranium stormy night, and sessio angel wings. And then there’s a lot packed into this corner. Uh the lavender, I don’t know which variety that is. Uh there’s two lots of mint and this is berries and cream and some more basil. There’s an alium uh called Millennium. And this is Philipendula Meadow Sweet. It smells amazing. It smells of somewhere like vanilla and honey and almonds. Um there is a red cosmos and over in this corner are some very happy bees on these alium. These are Welsh bunching onions. Look at that bee. They arrived so quickly after I started planting the garden. And here’s some margarm. Likewise with bees and wasps and hoverflies on it. and a shuttlecock fern which has been growing in our garden. Uh and I lifted several of these to bring and along the side has some more grass and um an agustache black adder. Several more ferns uh which came from the garden. Uh this is a colus which I actually bought in uh because I didn’t have anything else that was this color. I was hoping to um grow um something that was this color. and in fact some sort of edible leaf that color but uh that didn’t happen. I would like to say that I they failed but I I failed to sew the seeds. So uh the white cosmos again and then down here is some uh coriander and in this corner is alilla mollis. [Music] And bed number 11 is the last of the four central beds. And starting at this end, there is Veronica Castrom Cupid. There is some more of the margaram with the very dark birds. There’s some more of the flocks. And this one could be bright eyes. There’s some alilla. And then this is phis or phmis. Um, it has uh yellow flowers in these whs. I would have hoped for more flowers on this this year, but I suspect it’s getting a bit congested and I suspect it’s also uh taking quite a lot of nutrients from the rose because this rose plant is certainly the smallest. So, one of my jobs this autumn is to remove uh quite a chunk of this, take it through to the forest garden. Moving along, there is a geranium Mrs. Kendall Clark, another of their very bright pink manardada, and then uh another of the Nusia Matadonica with their amazing I can’t even describe the color. It’s almost burgundy. Uh but it’s brighter than that. The flowers in bed number 12 are on the Greek gigantis beans. They haven’t been hugely happy this year, I suspect. Uh even though we’ve had quite a bit of rain here in West Wales, I suspect uh there either aren’t enough nutrients or there’s just not enough moisture in the ground for them. But as it’s been raining this morning and it’s due to rain again uh in a little while, hopefully that will sort that out. Bed number 13 is actually a really small bed. Um but it brings me a huge amount of joy. Um so this is Agustachi Black Adder. Uh, the bees love it. There’s lots of bumblebees on here at the moment, which is great. And then some more maram down there. And I suspect that might be a golden one or it’s a gold tip leaf, something like that. Bed number 14 is unlike any of the other beds in as much that it’s got this bright red manarda and the yellow rebecia together, which is really striking. But most of my garden is quite gentle and subtle. And this is really in your face. I quite like it. So, the margaram again with the very dark purple flower buds uh and the the pale mauve flowers. And then here I’ve got a dwarf Jerusalem artichoke which also has yellow flowers uh but not yet. Bed number 15 has um the large rhubarb plants at each end. That’s the temple early. So, I’m not harvesting that now. I’m just allowing the leaves to grow and get all the energy from the sun to go back into the root ready for next year. U the flowers in this bed, uh there is a digitalist there. Now I know everyone goes, “You’re very growing fox gloves in a vegetable garden.” Well, yes, but then I know not to eat them. I know to uh wash anything in the bed very carefully that’s been around them. Um and nobody else is harvesting from my garden. So, as far as I’m concerned, it’s safe to have them. These wonderful aliium flowers, these wonderful globes of flour are leaks. So, they’re leaks I planted last year and I’ve allowed them to flower. Aren’t these amazing? Think how much we would pay for uh aliium bulbs that did this for, you know, an ornamental garden. My advice is if you have some leaks in your garden, leave a few to go to seed cuz look how beautiful they are. Bed number 16. This is the one that I promised myself I would next time I was weeding I would come through and start with this bed. Well, that’s not what I did. So, now I have a bed full of rose bay willow herb again. Now, you know, it’s going to be a nuisance next year. It’s a bit of a nuisance this year, but they do look beautiful. So, you know, I’m just going to take a positive from this and just say, well, they were pretty. So, here we’ve got um a mow. So, this is a wild mow. I have planted it, but it’s a wild mow. Uh there’s a sedum um spectally autumn joy. again there. I can see there’s some brasas here uh that are sending up uh shoots uh for flowers. I can’t even remember what that was. It was something I planted very late. Heyi ho. Uh at the front there uh is some um a strancher. It’s a very dark red one. So I think it’s rubra. Uh it’s gone over now. The seeds are there. I need to collect some and I need to sprinkle some. The uh fern that you can see uh is a shuttlecock fern. They actually get really big and tall. They get to sort of 5t 1.5 m tall um when they’re in like moist conditions. It’s quite dry in this bed. Uh so they’re still saying quite small but they do spread um they spread through like a ryome and uh at the front there there is another pony uh which produced I don’t know three or four flowers this year. Not as many as the one over there but still I’m really pleased with it. And should we just mention the dock there which you can see last year’s uh seed heads are still there. So, that has been sitting there waiting for me to do something with it for at least uh two years now. It’ll come eventually. Now, I am in the process of filming a tour of the food forest, the forest garden. But in the meantime, if you want a reminder of what it looks like, I’ll leave a link on the screen and also in the video description.