Sleightholm Folk Art

Good morning, friends– and happy Tuesday! How about we have a little Tasha Tuesday!

I don’t know about you, but I have gardening on the brain these days. The garden here is green and full of blooms, and I’ve started collecting herbs for the garden and just got a few plants for the porch as well. As a new growing season begins here in Oklahoma, I’ve taken out a few of my favorite garden books, which include Tovah Martin’s beautiful book “Tasha Tudor’s Garden” (with amazing photos by Richard Brown) as well as “Kitchen Gardens” by Mary Mason Campbell and illustrated by Tasha (I wrote more about Mary Mason Campbell in a Tasha Tuesday post a few years ago, which you can read HERE)

The book by Tovah Martin is rich and lovely, and since Tovah is an avid gardener and talented writer, you get a very knowledgeable and intimate look at Tasha garden. (Speaking of Tovah Martin, I had the pleasure of interviewing her a few years ago, and you can read that interview HERE. I’ve been writing these posts a long time!)

One thing that I have very much taken to heart about Tasha’s ‘cottage garden’ style of gardening is the love of a very full and abundant garden that is in continual bloom as spring flowers make way for summer flowers who make way for autumn flowers. And, practically speaking, if plants grow large and close enough to take up the majority of the bed, it makes for less weeding. To some it may look very busy and bit of a jumble, but I love it. Tasha planted this sort of garden masterfully. And a lot of what she knew was learned by trial and error— which is how the majority of us garden. No one season is the same, and there’s constant change in a garden. Learning what works well where comes from experience. Although reading garden books like Mary Mason Campbell’s “Kitchen Gardens” is very helpful in gaining advice before you plant.

This charming little book is “for the gardener who loves to cook and the cook who loves to garden” and is full of history, insight, tips, in depth lists of plants and herbs, and utterly charming illustrations by Tasha Tudor. Below is a pencil illustration Tasha created (there are both black and white and color illustrations in it) of a delightfully old fashioned kitchen garden complete with brick path. I have warm memories of walking through Tasha’s own herb garden when I was able to go on a tour of her house and garden a few years ago. It was just as charming as this drawing. And don’t you love the drawing of the woman sitting at her table, ordering her seeds?

Right now in my garden, I have some herbs to plant— mainly basil, rosemary and thyme. Basil is one of my very favorite herbs— as is rosemary. However, both my ‘perennial’ rosemary bushes died in February’s freezing temperatures and snow, so I’m back to square one with it. I just planted out two small rosemarys this afternoon.

According to Tasha’s drawing above, there are many herbs and vegetables to plant in a kitchen garden. Do you see any plants that you will be growing this year? Or some you haven’t thought of? I do have garlic growing in my garden already that I planted last fall. This year will be my first harvest of garlic! However, I dont know what ‘burnet’ is that she has listed. I will have to look that up!

Well, I hope you are doing well and have had a good April. The beauty of May is just around the corner, and we are warm enough here that I dont have much fear of frosts. We have a little purple finch nesting in the eave of our porch and the bats have returned, swooping through the yard in the last sliver of light at dusk. It makes me so happy to see them return each year.

I will be back later on this week to share more with you. But until then–

Take Joy!
H