Hello, and a warm welcome. I am Dot Hawkins. For over fifty years I have gardened in the Yorkshire Dales, on thin, stony hill soil behind a dry-stone wall, the way my own grandmother taught me. To me a garden is never just work: it is a piece of home that grows again every year. This page is my way of passing on what I have learned over the years \u2014 from the notebook that never leaves my side.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I grew up on a small hill farm in the Dales, where the wind is strong and nothing grows by itself. My grandmother still kept the best kitchen garden in the village: sweet peas on the wall, potatoes in neat rows and herbs by the back door. As a child, my job was to fill the watering cans and pick the slugs off the lettuces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Only much later did I understand what a rare school that garden was. There I learned to test the soil with my hands, to read the weather in the sky and to see what a plant was missing just by looking at it. None of it came from a book; it was all passed on from hand to hand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All my life I have sown, planted and harvested: beans and potatoes in summer, apples in autumn, and in winter the houseplants on every windowsill. I was never a gardener by trade; I was a daughter, a granddaughter and a neighbour, and I learned by doing, season after season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You cannot rush a garden. I have learned to give a rose its time, to leave a cutting in peace and not to check every day whether it has roots yet. The best beds are often the ones you look after quietly and regularly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If my garden has a philosophy, it is patience. Every plant has its season, and nature teaches us to wait: an orchid does not flower faster because you wish it would, and an apple is ripe only when it is ready. People, I can tell you, are not so different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Early in the morning I walk round the garden with a cup of tea and see what has grown overnight. I have a word with the neighbours over the wall, swap cuttings and seeds, and in the evening I write in my notebook what went well and what I will do differently next year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Between the vegetable plot, the rose bed and the orchids on the windowsill, there is always something to tell. I share my planting tricks here the way I learned them myself: with no fuss, step by step, and only the ones I have tried with my own hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If my words keep you company a little on your own path, that makes me truly happy. And if you would like to write me a few lines, you will find everything you need on the contact page<\/a>. I look forward to hearing from you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2014 Dot, from the Yorkshire Dales<\/em><\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hello, and a warm welcome. I am Dot Hawkins. For over fifty years I have gardened in the Yorkshire Dales, on thin, stony hill soil behind a dry-stone wall, the way my own grandmother taught me. To me a garden is never just work: it is a piece of home that grows again every year. … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1451","page","type-page","status-publish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/easyplantingtricks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/easyplantingtricks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/easyplantingtricks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/easyplantingtricks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1451"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/easyplantingtricks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1451\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/easyplantingtricks.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}