Kim Light is well known on Instagram for her absolutely gorgeous cut flower garden, at @my_scottish_garden. But it is not just a regular cut flower garden that Kim has in Wishaw, just outside Glasgow: she ripped up her traditional front garden to transform the space.
Our editor chatted to Kim to find out a little more about her fabulous growing space. This is only a snipper of the conversation – hear the full chat on the Scotland Grows Show.
Kim, tell us a bit about why you decided to rip out the front lawn, and what you did to make a space for growing cut flowers?
When I moved here, I rented the property. The garden had two strips of grass with stone borders around the outside, and a pathway up the middle, quite a standard, easy maintenance garden, which I did for 3 years, until I bought the house.
I didn’t touch the front garden until probably 2018/19, when I started thinking about how I could change it. I knew nothing about growing flowers, I didn’t know when to sow seeds, or anything like that. Basically I found Instagram, then I started seeing garden and things, so I started researching when to start flowers.
I found out from a friend about no dig and thought it would save me digging up a clay lawn because I did not want to do that. I wanted to have a nice flower bed, but the thought of having to turn over grass and get it workable, it is quite thick clay, was off-putting. I’m sure I could make pots out of my soil, the clay is so thick in my garden.
I basically got some old pallet wood, collected cardboard, and laid it down on the grass. I soaked the cardboard, and then got bags of well rotted manure, compost, anything I had, and I left it for a couple of months. I was very dubious though that it would work, but wanted to reuse what I had.
So that was how the first bed started, but then this bed on the end, it just looked ludicrous on its own, so I had to build more beds. Then I painted them. Then I called them the pink bed, the blue bed, and the green bed, and that’s how it started, slowly, so I was not overwhelmed.
And then you started sowing seeds?
That year I found a company selling seed boxes which contained seeds to sow each month, I thought it would give me an idea of what to sow as I had no idea. I bought seed trays, and a low, zippy greenhouse, more like a cold frame, and that was where all my seedlings got stored over the winter.
Why did you choose to grow from seed as opposed to going to a nursery and just buying established plants?
Money. I’m a single parent, so every penny counts. I thought a packet of seeds is a few pounds, and in the seed box I was getting had 6 or 7 packets of seeds for £10 a month.
And which seeds did you choose to grow?
I grew everything. They would send them out, and of course, I sowed the whole packet. I tried everything. I had no idea about hardy annuals, half-hardy annuals, whether you autumn sow them, spring sow them, nothing. I was winging it – I still wing it most of the time!
You started out sowing from seed in order to save money, but you clearly found the joy in it because you’re still doing.
My mental health has been saved with gardening because of nurturing those seedlings all the way through their life. It fascinates me that you can hardly see a snapdragon seed, it’s so tiny, and it grows into this massive sphere of beautiful flowers that you can cut, and it it keeps giving. Cut and come again flowers are basically what I aim for. If they don’t produce more flowers, they are out my garden.
And what you did is you grew these masses of gorgeous flowers, and then you gave them away.
The thing was to grow to give, and during COVID, I would make a jam jar full of flowers: grabbing flowers, learning from people online, watching videos to make posies, watching Instagram.
I want to spread the joy, and that’s what I did through my cut flower patch. We have a local community centre here which did loads during COVID, delivered groceries to people who could not get out, and I would add in a jam jar of flowers a couple of times a week.
Then when COVID was over, and they started to open the community centre up, I would drop off jam jars of flowers for the tables. Basically people that are not seen everyday would go, have a bite to eat, and I would put flowers out in the morning, and then they took them away with them.
I don’t know which are your favourites to grow but you post quite a lot about sweet peas on your feed. Are sweet peas up there amongst your favourites?
They are, because they smell, the scent is intoxicating. I love them until a certain point, it’s a full time job growing sweet peas, they grow a foot overnight. And the one thing with sweet peas is you have to keep picking to enjoy. I think for that, they are amazing.
When do you sow your sweet peas? Are you an autumn or a spring sower?
I am normally an autumn sower, but, with the weather last year, I got dampening off on everything. I lost 75% of my seedlings last year.
I’m not sowing sweet peas until February. I built a grow light station in the house this year with heat mats and grow lights so I could get them a really good kick start at the beginning of this year, which I’ll do again next year. I’ll just start them early but don’t do that unless you have grow lights, we don’t have enough light in the in the sky at that time of year in Scotland, I’m manipulating the conditions to suit myself.
What else are you sowing in autumn?
Well, I’ve done it all. The biennials are done, sown on the summer solstice, and now in the ground before the frost comes.
For my autumn sowings, it’s mainly snapdragons. This year, I had so many, and they’re still flowering. I sowed them in autumn and in spring, and they are absolutely amazing.
Scabious is one of my favourites, I grew a massive variety of those this year. I am going to actually save some seeds this year because ‘Summer Fruits’ was just absolutely gorgeous in the garden.
What would be the top tips you would give to someone who wanted to start a cut flower garden?
Just do it. Don’t hold back. Just put cardboard over your lawn, put some compost in, build a bed, it’s not hard. Buy a packet of seeds, grow stuff that’s easy.
