The Garden Emerging

I've been quite quiet on the old blog front this year, after having planned to really get stuck in to it and post up more regularly on what we're up to.

It's been a year for formulating plans and ideas for what the yard is to end up being and how we're going to make it productive. I guess, reading through my notes on forest gardening, I've been working through the 'garden purpose' section quite heavily and wondering how best to use the yard to make a bit of money back. How can I get productive and yet still create a beautiful, natural, wildlife abundant system? When I get to pondering and perusing plans, I don't tend to want to share them until I'm pretty sure I'm on the way to something that could work. So... hesitantly, this is what I've come up with:

I'm going to grow herbs. These will be planted amongst fruit trees and bushes, along with the occasional medicinal shrubbery and wildlife luring plantings. So I'm thinking herbal teas, hand made face and body creams, scrubs, soaps and all things pamper related, balms, bees and fresh fruit smoothies for the workers! Maybe even a wood fired sauna and hot tub, with earth oven pizzas to finish off a hard day's work, all tucked in amongst lush herbal plantings and a beautiful view.

But all that fancy sauna and pizza stuff is a little down the line just yet, sadly! First there's a lot of planting to do and lots of experimenting with cream recipes, solar dryers to build... Ooh, this is going to be lots of fun!

So I've selected a starter list of herbs that I will use in my creams and am sourcing vegetable oils to try and get them from as close to home as possible and preferably lovely organic ones. Ultimately bees will be needed for beeswax, but I shall buy the wax in for now. I'm setting up nursery beds for relatively small areas of herbs to be grown and I'll use these for my first batches of creams, lotions and potions and will see how they do.

I'm still slightly unsure about the whole thing, but kind of excited at the same time as I just love mixing creams and making recipes and pamper goodies. But having never run my own business, it's a bit daunting! I also know I have a tendency to bite off more than I can chew... but sometimes you just have to go with things. So I am. Wish me luck!