weekend vegetable gardening with antiques

This stone cherub figure will add a touch of whimsy to the final vegetable garden. Here is my collection of antique gardening tools including a garden line, a dibber (very useful for putting holes in ground before planting seedlings) a daisy weeder (my favourite tool) a hand fork and trowel, a yard broom, a potato digger (about to be put to use when my pinkeye potatoes are ready) a spade and a garden fork. I love D-end handles, like the one on the spade.

My collection of watering cans. The large on is French and has a beautiful shower like spray. It can get heavy though if you fill it too much. The small one at the front is an English 1 and 1/2 gallon can. More my sort of size. And the green one is my favourite, not in terms of use but to look at!

A few old decorative urns, awaiting final placement when the vegetable garden is completed (this may be a year or two away). In the mean time they look decorative and hold a lemon tree and a bay tree.

I have two of these Victorian wire work planters which I luckily found in one of my favourite stores, The Vintage Rose in Launceston, Tasmania. I have various herbs planted in them.

This is a rare English rhubarb forcer which I received for Christmas one year. It is about to be put to use when I plant my rhubarb.

This is one of our latest projects which started this weekend. These are French garden tiles which I bought recently from our store (see previous post). In this garden bed we have an espalier lemon tree against the fence and plan to plant rhubarb (which I have in pots at the moment).

Harvested beetroot in an old English garden trug. We have almost sold out of these in the store but plan to find more on our next buying trip.

I plan to espalier this fig tree which is also currently in a pot. I would love to know if anyone has done this to a fig tree or can see a reason I shouldn't try it?

This poor artichoke is also in a pot! He is awaiting his own garden bed as I believe artichokes can take up a lot of room...

And lastly, here is an image of a dreamy parterre in the small Gloucestershire village of Winchcombe in the UK that I took on our last buying trip. I was very inspired by the layout of this garden, although I don't have that much space. The English sure know how to garden!