Innholdsfortegnelse for 3-Feb-2018 i Amateur Gardening

THE first week of February doesn’t usually have a lot to recommend it, but in 2018 things are different. In this issue of Amateur Gardening we are delighted to give away our first free seeds of 2018 in conjunction with renowned horticultural experts Mr Fothergill’s. The company, based in Newmarket, Suffolk, was launched in 1978 and today supplies more than 3,000 retail outlets as well as selling direct via mail order to homes throughout the country. A different variety of seeds will appear on the cover of AG each week, with illustrated instructions on how to grow the plants from scratch inside. I will demonstrate different ways of sowing seeds through easy-to-follow picture guides and will outline the growing requirements for each plant. The information won’t stop at germination and…

Seeds and seedlings are extremely delicate and need optimum conditions to thrive. They are easily damaged or killed by pests and diseases carried in air, water and compost, so always use fresh compost, clean tap water and new or washed equipment. Prevent fungal problems such as damping off disease, which will wipe out a whole seed tray, by keeping seedlings well ventilated. Do this by removing coverings after germination and opening air vents in seed tray lids. Small seeds are fiddly to sow, so make it easier by mixing them with a little horticultural sand and sprinkling the mix onto compost.…

Check that your garden chemicals are safely stored and still in date. Keep them cool and dry where pets and children can’t access them. Store them in their original containers and keep weedkiller away from plant food to avoid dangerous mistakes. Store dry products above liquids to avoid contamination. Never dispose of unwanted chemicals down the drain as they will end up in the watercourse. Find out and follow your local authority’s policy on safe disposal. Chemicals discontinued for economic reasons can be used within a two-year period of grace.…

1 Carefully lift the plant from the soil, making sure you keep lots of soil around the roots. 2 Pot it up in a container large enough to take all the roots. I’m using John Innes No2 compost. 3 Trim off old, damaged leaves, water well and keep the plant somewhere sheltered until you have room to replant it. • Remove old hellebore leaves to make room for new growth. It also removes potentially diseased growth and lets pollinators get to the flowers more easily.…

1 Place your water butt on its stand and use a spirit level to work out where it will join the downpipe. 2 Mark the pipe and cut cleanly through it. Cut straight, otherwise the diverter will not fit on properly. 3 Attach the diverter to the pipe and slot in the hose that will link it to the butt. Make sure it is long enough! 4 Now drill a hole where the hose will join the butt. The area should be plain to see. 5 Add the spout that fits into the hole and attaches to the hose. Once this is on, fit the tap to the base of the butt. 6 Attach the hose from the drainpipe to the butt. Make sure it is secure, and wait for…

2 Feb: Close-up Photography, Mini Master Class: RHS Wisley, Wisley Lane, Working, Surrey, GU23 6QB. 0203 176 5830, rhs.org.uk/gardens/wisley 2: Wedding and Bridal Flowers: RHS Hyde Hall, Creephedge Lane, Rettendon Common, Chelmsford, Essex, CM3 8ET. 0203 176 5830, rhs.org.uk/gardens/hyde-hall 3: Basic Gardening Skills – Seed Sowing: RHS Garden Rosemoor, Great Torrington, Rosemoor, Torrington, Devon, EX38 8PH. 0203 176 5830, rhs.org.uk/gardens/rosemoor 3-4: Snowdrop Walk: Rode Hall, Scholar Green, Cheshire ST7 3QP. 01270 873237, rodehall.co.uk 3-4: Snowdrops at Colesbourne Park, Colesbourne, Cheltenham, Glos, GL53 9NP. 01242 870264, colesbournegardens.org.uk 3-28: Snowdrop Days: Evenley Wood Garden, Evenley, Northants NN13 5SH. 07776 307849 Evenleywoodgarden.co.uk 6: Brilliant Colours in Your Garden: RHS Garden Rosemoor, Great Torrington, Rosemoor, Torrington, Devon EX38 8PH. 0203 176 5830, rhs.org.uk/gardens/rosemoor • Please send details and images of any events happening in…

NOW is an excellent time to set up bird boxes. Although it’s still winter, many birds are ready to nest and are looking for places to settle down. There are few natural sites, so it’s helpful to put up boxes. We all love to see most birds but, of the many, which are actually useful to gardeners? Perhaps not those with a taste for our fruits, such as blackbirds, but even they do some good. Seed-eating birds help by reducing potential weeds, but their effect must be minimal. Without any doubt, though, insectivorous birds really are our friends. Each will find and consume countless thousands of bugs, bug eggs, larvae and all sorts of little critters. The smallest, wrens, are said to eat a huge percentage, if not all their…

1 You’ll find that many seed catalogues offer specific garlic varieties for spring planting (these don’t have such a strong chilling requirement as autumn types). ‘Solent Wight’ and ‘Mersley Wight’ are two such varieties, but many others are available. Avoid buying bulbs from the supermarket. 2 Break each head into individual cloves, and only plant the largest as these will ultimately produce larger heads for harvesting (the smaller bulbs can be potted up as garlic ‘chives’). Fill 4in (10cm) pots with multipurpose compost, and bury one clove 2in (5cm) deep per pot. 3 Water each pot thoroughly, allow to drain and then place in a greenhouse or similar (this doesn’t need to be heated). Once the soil warms up the resulting potted plants can be planted outside. Choose a warm,…

THE blue of lobelia can be the most exciting, most penetrating blue you’ll find in the garden. However, lobelia for patios and summer borders also comes in other colours, as well as in both trailing and bushy versions – each of which is suited to different garden situations. It is not hard to see why lobelia is so popular. Aside from that unique and brilliant blue, these plants offer billowing clouds of colour in hanging baskets and tubs, and will intermingle prettily with other container plants. Meanwhile, the tight hummocks of the bedding varieties, once so popular in seaside planting schemes, work well in borders. And the best varieties will flower from June until the first frosts. All the seed-raised varieties are derived from Lobelia erinus, which grows wild in…

‘CHARLOTTE’ This reliable second early salad potato is widely popular. The oval tubers, which are often large, have a delicious flavour. ‘JAZZY’ This second early salad potato performs well in a container, producing large yields of small waxy tubers. ‘KESTREL’ An attractive show-bench favourite second early with mauve-blue ‘eyes’. They are a good general-purpose spud and tubers have some slug resistance. ‘RED DUKE OF YORK’ A tasty first early potato producing large, red-skinned, oval tubers with floury but moist yellow flesh. New foliage growth is an attractive purple. ‘SARPO KIFLI’ An early maincrop, blight-resistant salad potato producing large long tubers with delicious creamy flesh. ‘SWIFT’ A first early that’s ideal for small containers. Good yields and a medium texture.…

‘Marvel of Four Seasons’ A very attractive butterhead-type lettuce with a green centre and burgundy outer leaves. As its name suggests, this French heirloom variety is hardy enough to be grown all year round. ‘Reine des Glaces’ Green jagged leaves form a tight ball as the plant matures. Allow to grow to full size, then harvest; or pick the outer leaves over several months. Has a nice crunchy texture and a good flavour. Rocket ‘Dragon’s Tongue’ This new variety has serrated, purple-veined leaves and a peppery flavour. Good tolerance of the UK climate, so less likely to bolt. Treat as a cut-and-come-again crop, picking regularly. ‘Black Seeded Simpson’ An old variety with fabulous bright green, knobbly leaves. Very hardy and weather tolerant, and especially easy. Can be grown as a…

Pulmonaria ‘Diana Clare’ (AGM) Verdigris foliage and violet flowers in March offset those yellows beautifully. Deadhead, but do not trim back hard. Both the grey-blue ‘Opal’ and ‘Raspberry Splash’ flower in March and have spotted foliage. Muscari azureum (AGM) A lovely non-invasive grape hyacinth with soft-blue flowers that open from greenish buds. This sculptural plant looks good with narcissi in pots or in the ground, in a position that does not bake in summer. Scilla siberica (AGM) A great cobalt-blue bulb to naturalise in shadier areas close to deciduous shrubs. The vivid flowers and bright-green foliage light up all yellow narcissi, and because it sets seed it will increase year on year. Anemone blanda (AGM) This sun-loving blue anemone has open flowers…

P . ‘Islington Peppermint’ Like a smaller version of better known peppermint scented P. tomentosum, so expect velvety, mint-scented foliage with white and dark magenta flowers. P . ‘L’Élégante’ A classy ivy-leaf, ideal for a small hanging basket. White-edged leaves flush purple in the sun, contrasting with masses of white, purple-veined flowers. P . ‘Mrs Pollock’ An old favourite introduced in 1858 with tri-coloured foliage marked red, gold and green. Well-spaced scarlet blooms complement leaf colours. P. triste A fascinating species whose divided leaves and small night-scented dark maroon and cream flowers die back to a tuber for winter. Treat like a potted succulent.…

A vine time to prune Q My daughter has a three-year-old vine that is already producing grapes. She is moving house and wants to take it with her – should she prune before transplanting it? Christina Slade (via email) A The three-year-old grapevine is best potted now, before buds burst, in readiness for transplanting later. There is one problem – grapes should be pruned in autumn to obviate the risk of ‘bleeding’, which could occur if the job is done in spring. As the vine will have to be cut back before it is potted, it may be too late and there could be a substantial loss of sap. If there is no alternative and pruning has to be done now, hopefully the plant will not be unduly weakened by…

Seed dispersal and survival In nature, some seeds may travel many miles (even thousands) by wind or sea, often taking months or even years before they find a resting place where they can germinate. In the animal world we nurture our offspring, tending to their every need, but this doesn’t happen in the plant world. Why? Well, put simply, it is undesirable for seeds to grow too close to the parent plant. Often many seeds, possibly thousands, are produced, and if even just a few of them germinated in the vicinity of the parent, both generations of plant would compete for space, light, food and moisture. Veg seed viability If stored in a cool, dry and dark place, vegetable seeds will, on average, last (stay ‘viable’) for a number of…

A FEW years ago I invested in a massive 1,000-watt sodium-halide lamp and reflector to give overwintered pelargoniums, citrus and herbs a boost in the greenhouse. Flick the switch and instantaneously plants are irradiated with a light akin to the Saharan sun, but I worry that the brightness creates a negative impression of what goes on at Chez Buckland. I first became concerned when I arrived home after dark to find the garden glowing like a fallen star. Its radiance was so reminiscent of the final scene from Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind that I feared that I might be abducted or, worse, ‘probed’ by extra-terrestrials. Thankfully, the source of the alien luminescence revealed itself to be plugged into the socket in the greenhouse, but as reality…

Aquilegia vulgaris is a clump-forming hardy perennial that flowers in shades of pink, blue, violet and also white. The blooms come in different shapes and sizes, and usually have a spur poking out at the back. These low-maintenance plants grow best in free-draining soil in sun or partial shade and look their best in courtyard or cottage gardens. Aquilegia has several common names, including granny’s bonnet, God’s breath, culverwort and naked woman’s shoes. They are easily propagated from seed – indeed, they are so free-seeding that it is best to deadhead them as soon as the flowers start to fade to avoid seedlings appearing all over your garden. If you sow and grow on your aquilegias undercover, the young plants will appreciate a generous helping of well-rotted organic matter dug…

Put the tray in a cold frame, unheated greenhouse or light windowsill. Germination takes 3-6 weeks. 1 Sieve fresh seed compost into a seed tray or seed modules and then gently tamp the surface flat. 2 Sow the seeds thinly onto the surface of the compost. This gives the seedlings room to grow. 3 Cover with a fine layer of compost or compost and vermiculite. Moisten it with clean tap water. 4 Label the seeds (essential if you are planning lots of sowing) and put a lid over the seed tray.…

When the solution has settled, use the enclosed guide to check the presence, or otherwise, of the relevant nutrients, or pH, of your soil. 1 Take some soil, and remove debris. Put a sample in a lidded jam jar, add water and shake and leave to settle. 2 Siphon off some water and add it to a test tube. Each nutrient test will have its own tube and kit. 3 Add the required amount of nutrient or pH solution to the cloudy water in each tube. 4 Scoop in the stated amount of nutrient powder. Screw on the lid and shake for 30 seconds.…

IF you haven’t already got a water butt in the garden, this is the week to install one. If you have room for more than one, so much the better. Lack of space isn’t a problem as water butts come in varying sizes from slimline to ones that hold 700l of water. The advantages of water butts are economic, horticultural and practical. Rainwater is free, so if you are on a meter it lets you keep plants irrigated at no extra cost – and if we have a long, dry summer the stored water will come in extremely useful. Rainwater is better for plants and soil than tap water as it hasn’t been through an intensive purification process or treated with harsh chemicals. It is softer and falls from the…

PEACH leaf curl is a troublesome and unsightly fungal problem that attacks peaches, almonds, nectarines and sometimes apricots. Once it has arrived, the disease is hard to eradicate as its spores linger in the soil around affected trees. Symptoms are displayed in spring; leaves start developing normally, but then become distorted with swollen red blisters before falling prematurely. Although the tree may appear to recover, spores from the disease (Taphrina deformans) hang around in the soil and re-emerge annually. A badly affected tree may die off in subsequent years. To prevent leaf curl you need to take action in late winter or early spring and move your tree somewhere dry where the fungus, which thrives in damp conditions, can’t access it. The easiest method is to move it undercover if…

WHAT, I wonder, would be your desert island choice for garden tools? A pocket knife is the obvious first choice and not just for desert island use, but gardening in all situations. My next requirement is the trusty spade that travels in the boot wherever I go. This spade was one of the last Spear & Jackson stainless-steel spades forged in Britain, cost £100 and it has an extra-long handle to cope with my 6ft (1.8m) height. This is my fourth spade, with the first bought as a teenager and worn down to a fraction of the original size. The second is another Neverbend that is also getting well worn, while the third is a Stanley stainless-steel model with a plastic handle. Spades forged from a block of steel are…

1 Clean out old pest-infested material from bird nest boxes as they’ll be needed soon. Take care as it will contain nasties. 2 Buy new bags of the best sowing and potting composts, sieve and bring indoors to warm up ready for use. 3 Force shoots on sweet potatoes, place in moist sand and keep in the warm. Once shoots are finger-length, detach and pot up. 4 Start hardy annuals, salad leaves, onion and leek seed in trays under cover. Also sow early tomatoes and cucumbers in warmth.…

STARTING a job that is so optimistic about the arrival of summer is a great spirit-booster. So if you’re faced with a bleak February day, take a leaf out of my gardening notebook and treat yourself to this blissful activity. Hopefully, you took my advice back in November to pot up a few strawberry plants (using early varieties like ‘Christine’ and ‘Gariguette’ will help ensure the fruits mature quickly). If you missed the boat don’t fret – you can buy potted plants from good garden centres now, too. With a little warmth you can encourage these varieties to yield a harvest in late April or early May, weeks before outdoor plants are berrying up. You need a sufficient chilling period (hence potting plants up and leaving them outside for winter)…

Lobelias are available as seed, as plants grown from seed or as plants grown from cuttings. And while we tend to view them as annuals, they are actually perennial plants. Look carefully towards the base of the stems and you’ll often see roots forming – ready-made cuttings! I’ve found that cuttings-raised lobelias almost always make better plants than seed-raised varieties, with larger flowers in purer colours for a longer season. It’s as simple as that. And it seems the RHS agrees with my findings. A few years ago I was asked to judge a trial of more than 50 seed-raised and cuttings-raised varieties of lobelia. At the end of the trail the RHS concluded that: “The clonal varieties [those grown from cuttings] were not only more true to type, but…

EVERYONE wants to live on the sunny side of the street! When looking for the perfect property, it is rare for a gardener to have on their wish list “a generous area of dry shade”. It’s even more unusual for gardeners to yearn for a north-facing plot, unless they have a growing collection of hostas to accommodate. Whatever the aspect of your garden, it will have shade at some point of the day, and if you have mature trees or garden walls it is a certainty. There is no denying that gardening in dry shade is tricky and you will lose plants, but gardeners love a challenge! Growing successfully in dry shade requires more preparation than any other situation. Don’t expect even the right plants to thrive if they are…

■ Pot-grown plants are available from February onwards and can be put straight into the ground for instant colour. ■ Bulbs should be planted in September, spaced out and buried at twice the depth of the bulb. ■ If you’re planting in grass, cut a V shape in the turf with a spade and roll the turf back. Break up the exposed soil with a fork and place five bulbs in each triangle. Stretch and distress the turf with your hands before replacing it. ■ Remember that the narrower the foliage of your miniature daffs, the more drainage they need. ■ Deadhead named daffodils after flowering. However, species and wild daffodils spread by self-seeding, so leave N. cyclamineus and all wild daffodils to set seed. ■ Feed your daffodils and…

How do I prune my rambling rose? Q My daughter and her husband bought me a beautiful rambling rose. How should I cut it back? Mrs R Hall, Newark, Notts A Ramblers are vigorous plants that regularly produce new stems at or near ground level. They flower freely on wood produced the previous summer. There isn’t much to do in the first few years while they grow their framework of stems for you to tie back. All that is needed is to remove the dead, diseased and damaged wood, as well as any weak stems that are unlikely to flower or grow well. Once their growing area is filled, their readiness to produce new stems from the base should be encouraged by cutting out one in three of the main…

Perplexed at plastic bag charges AM I being unduly cynical at the support from retailers for compulsory plastic bag charging? Apart from the few companies that claim to donate this income to charity, the rest will be laughing their way to the bank! More to the point, it would be better to allow customers to use the empty cardboard boxes in which products have been delivered to the shop. My local supermarket used to have piles of these freely available at the checkout, and plastic bag use was minimal as a result. Nowadays, these have to be disposed of by retailers at vast cost. Surely far better for them to be taken home and disposed of by customers as recycled waste at no cost to traders? John Hein, Edinburgh Wendy…

• 30 January 1913 Britain’s first celebrity television gardener, Percy Thrower, was born in Buckinghamshire. Percy died in 1998. • 1 February 1560 Mr Child started a seed shop in Pudding Lane in the City of London (near where the Great Fire ignited a century later). His business survived, and was eventually bought by Hurst’s Seeds. • 2 February 1996 Flamingos in the Garden of Buckingham Palace were killed by a fox, which walked over the frozen lake to get to the birds. • 5 February 1799 John Lindley, eminent botanist and after whom the famous RHS library is named, was born in Norfolk. He died in 1865.…

GROWING plants from seed can sometimes feel time consuming and claustrophobic, especially when germinating seeds and growing seedlings are taking up every available surface in the house and greenhouse. But patience and care will be well rewarded in late spring, summer and autumn when your garden is brimming with colour and texture. I had a lot of fun and enjoyment sowing and growing last year’s seeds, despite a couple of failures when disease (damping off and botrytis grey mould) and slugs got the upper hand. The main lessons learned last year were to sow seeds thinly and avoid overcrowding, which makes pricking out harder and is a key cause of fungal problems. Also, get the watering right – too much and seeds will rot, too little and they will shrivel…

Get to know your garden before planting, says Ruth TO get the best out of your garden you need to know the make-up of your soil, its pH levels, and how evenly and richly nutrients are distributed across it. Testing your soil may sound offputtingly scientific, but it is a cheap and simple procedure – and one that will stop you buying the wrong plants and save you pots of cash in the process. Late winter is a good time to do the test, as the soil will probably have been lying fallow during the dormant weeks of winter so the test results should be ‘pure’. Test kits are widely available online and from garden centres. I don’t need a test to tell me the acidity or otherwise of my…

For your water butt to work efficiently, you need to make sure water can flow freely into it. Check gutters that feed into downpipes and clear them out regularly. This is particularly important after stormy weather and in autumn when leaves are falling. Rainwater also picks up dirt, debris, pest eggs and fungal spores, so clean your water butt each year. Due to these impurities, you should never use rainwater to irrigate seeds and seedlings.…

If conditions aren’t waterlogged or frozen, start digging in green manure to enrich your soil before planting. During the winter these beneficial plants will have been releasing nutrients back into the soil and their roots will have helped prevent erosion during times of heavy rain. Dig them in and leave them to rot down for a few weeks before planting crops or ornamentals. If there is too much top growth, remove and compost the excess.…

Always clean tools after use, especially ones with wooden handles. I hate to find dried soil on these. I find the Guernsey hoe, with its cranked wooden handle, a delight to use for all kinds of hand work. Do any other readers share my love of this tool? A well-worn garden fork is very useful to work through borders and tickle up beaten-down soil while removing weeds. If you reverse the arrow-shaped push hoe it will also function as a very good lawn-edging tool.…

YOU might recall back in November that I encouraged you to start some garlic cloves on the plot. Well, if you missed the boat (or if you just love garlic) the good news is that you can also plant some now. Generally, you’ll get larger harvestable heads if you give these pungent bulbs a long growing season. The early start encourages an extensive root system, which then results in stronger plants and larger bulbs. Often the soil is too wet and claggy to plant now, but you can bypass the problem by planting into pots, which are then kept in a greenhouse or conservatory. To find out how to do it, see panel right. Hoe off any overwintering weeds I’M all for getting ahead in the garden, and one bane…

AS an organic gardener I like to grow my own food and, as I once had a lowly post at the National Vegetable Research Station in Wellesbourne, Warwick, I feel that I’m keeping my hand in. We have vegetable plots in the garden and an allotment within walking distance. We grow all our own potatoes because commercial crops are sprayed with fungicide every seven days in order to prevent potato blight. That’s an average of 16 times from planting to harvest. Crops are also sprayed with weak acid to kill the top growth, and then the tubers are usually sprayed with anti-sprout to stop them chitting and greening up under supermarket lights. The maincrop varieties we grow are ‘Cara’, ‘Harlequin’ and ‘Victoria’, and we grow them on the allotment. ‘Cara’…

How can I improve my potato crop? QI can only grow potatoes in containers, but last year, despite my best efforts, there was not much yield per pot. How can I make this project more productive? Don Ely, York A Unearthing a crop of home-grown potatoes is one of gardening’s magical moments, and as these tasty tubers grow well in containers anyone with a sunny outdoor space can have a go. Even for those with larger plots this is a popular technique for early planting under glass and to move vulnerable plants under cover during warm, humid rainy summer weather when blight spores are likely to germinate. Cold-stored tubers planted in July and August to deliver new potatoes in time for Christmas do best in pots under unheated glass to…

Red rib dandelion Dandelions are popular in many European countries, where the bitter leaves are valued for their nutritional benefits. These have pretty dark-green leaves with red midribs. Red-veined sorrel A perennial herb with beautiful red-veined leaves and a tangy lemon flavour. Add a handful of leaves to a summer salad for a zesty lift. GAP Nasturtium This colourful half-hardy annual, used widely in bedding and containers, is also edible. Both the leaves and the bright flowers have a peppery flavour and can be added to salads. Pea shoots The fresh growth of peas can be harvested and used with other leaves. Sow densely into shallow seed trays and they will be ready for picking in just three weeks. Mustard wasabina This quick-growing, cut-and-come-again leaf tastes of the sushi lovers’…

‘Elka’ (AGM) Raised by Alec Gray, with white forward-facing petals surrounding a long lemon trumpet that turns paler as the flower ages. It’s always out in March. Lovely with blue muscari and very good in a pot. H: 6in (15cm). ‘Segovia’ (AGM) Raised by Alec Gray’s wife Flomay and named after his favourite town in Spain, this April-flowering small cupped daffodil has broad, white outers surrounding a pale-yellow centre. Best in the ground. H: 8-10in (20-25cm). ‘Rip van Winkle’ This early flowering, clump-forming yellow double came from Ireland and dates back to before 1884. Good on an alpine bed, or at the front of a sunny border, where you can appreciate the quilled petals and scent. H: 6in (15cm). ‘Jetfire’ (AGM) This is technically a bit too tall to be…

QI would like to grow some large-leaved Ricinus, but I’ve heard the whole plant is poisonous. Will it endanger my garden wildlife? Rev G Squire, Barnstaple, Devon A Although Ricinus (castor oil plant) is very poisonous, I am sure birds and other animals will instinctively avoid it. Poisoning from eating beans straight from the plant is potentially fatal. Q Can you can tell me the names of some varieties of Ilex aquifolium and Ilex crenata that are self-fertile? Christina Feltham (via email) AI don’t know of any varieties of Ilex crenata that are self-pollinating/self-fertile. A short list of Ilex aquifolium includes ‘J C Van Tol’, ‘Pyramidalis’, ‘Alaska’ and ‘Argentea Marginata’. Q Can you suggest any potatoes that are not susceptible to scab as I garden on chalky loam. Geoff Watts…

DOWNSIZING was always going to be a bitter-sweet experience for passionate gardener Janet Bashforth when she swapped a quarter of an acre for a 40m² plot bordering open countryside. Yet rather than dwell on the size of the new garden she had, she embraced the opportunity to create an entirely new design for the space surrounding her new home, a converted bungalow dating back to 1909 in the Cheshire village of High Legh. “I decided there was one more garden I could do,” says Janet, who has studied both horticulture and design at Reaseheath College after retiring from her career in customer services. “In some ways I felt a bit frustrated at leaving behind the space I had previously, but at the same time I like the cosiness of my…