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Tel: 01420 479950

Living Leaves Growing System

Love fresh produce and reduce your household bills by growing fruit & veg the easy way

Picking Cut & Come Again Wild Rocket

The Living Leaves Growing System is designed to make it easy for everyone, including those with no previous experience or knowledge of gardening, to enjoy organic produce from their own gardens with minimum time and effort and at an affordable cost.

Our Grow your Own system eliminates the need to spend long evenings planning and thinking about what vegetables to plant and when and as we deliver live plants, the time needed to sow and grow on seedlings before planting them in the garden.

We deliver direct to your door, a selection of raised beds and / or table beds to suit your requirements; cloches that can be securely fitted to the beds to provide crop protection; an easy to follow planting plan for vegetables based on a 4 year crop rotation; deliveries of live plants throughout the growing season at the right time to plant out, a hard copy of the Living Leaves Growing Guide that explains how to plant, look after and harvest your produce and monthly emails tailored to the produce you are growing with quick simple tips and essential tasks you can do in just half an hour.

A Living Leaves package includes:

Living Leaves Raised Beds & Table Beds

Living Leaves modular raised beds are available in a range of shapes, sizes and styles and in growing depths of 20 cms to 60 cms above ground level. They can be used individually or in combinations to create different kitchen garden layouts to fit your garden. Standard example layouts are provided with the system. The first photograph below is of four L shaped beds combined to make a hollow square with a table bed in the centre. Alternatively our design service at Alaster Anderson Gardens can create a complete kitchen garden design to your own specification.

The 1.2 metre raised beds have a number of advantages. Raising the level of soil promotes good drainage, provides additional depth of quality top soil and gives your kitchen garden structure and a sophisticated look. As the beds are only 1.2 metres wide it’s easy to reach across the beds to plant and harvest, this also means that there is no need to stand on the beds. To do so would result in compaction of the soil which inhibits plant growth. Maintaining a good soil structure reduces the amount of digging needed and results in healthier plants.

Table Beds

The Living Leaves System includes table height beds for those who would prefer to garden at waist height to avoid having to bend down. Two models of bed are available, 1.2 metres square and 1.2 metres by 2.4 metres, each with legs to provide a total height of 70 mms above ground level.

These tables can be used individually as an invaluable salad or herb bed to provide succulent completely fresh produce close to the kitchen door or as part of a raised bed system.

The photographs below show a 1.2 metre square bed with protective Living Leaves cloche being used to grow salad crops and strawberries.

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Living Leaves Cloches for Crop Protection & to Extend the Season

We have developed an exclusive and unique range of cloches (patent applied for) to our own design to complement our raised and table beds. Living Leaves cloches provide temporary or permanent protection from adverse weather conditions, pest damage from insects, birds and domestic cats. The Living Leaves Cloche can be easily fitted to the Living Leaves raised beds and removed and relocated to another Living Leaves bed as required. An anchor system locates the cloche firmly on the bed to greatly reduce the danger of damage in windy conditions.

The photos below show the three different types of Living Leaves Cloche Covers all tested at our trial garden and manufactured exclusively for us in England. The cloche covers are fully tailored to fit over a galvanised steel framework with easy access to crops provided by a zipper window on either side.

Living Leaves Cloches are available in two heights, 69 cms and 91.5 cms with a choice of three covers designed for specific purposes:

A Living Leaves Greenhouse Cloche with a PVC cover, this durable cover that will last you years with proper handling, is designed to extend the growing season of some of your crops by providing a protected micro climate from the outside elements. The cloche also allows you to grow more tender species that you would otherwise struggle to grow outdoors, for example chillies, peppers, some types of tomatoes and aubergine.

A Living Leaves Insect Protection Cloche Cover - used to protect crops that are susceptible to insect damage, our fine mesh covers will keep out all relevant pests. A good example of this is the prevention of carrot fly from laying its eggs on the developing roots. Due to the fine nature of the mesh light levels are reduced by up to 30% but this will have no adverse effect on your crops, providing they are growing in a sunny position.

A Living Leaves Bird / Cat Protection Cloche Cover - birds, for example pigeons can be immensely destructive to your vegetable garden and cats can use the soil in your raised beds as a 'litter tray'. The Living Leaves bird and cat net will keep them out (it will also discourage rabbits).

Guarantee – our cloches come with a 5 year guarantee

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Live Organic Plants

As part of the Living Leaves System, live plants are delivered to your door monthly between March and October with seed potatoes delivered in February. All deliveries are timed to coincide with the correct time for planting out. All Living Leaves vegetable plants are grown specially for us by a leading Soil Association Registered Organic grower. We also provide some seeds for crops that don’t transplant well as seedlings, like carrots.

Delivery dates are provided by e mail provided in advance.

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Planting Plans and Crop Rotation

The Living Leaves system includes planting plans for vegetables which are based on a four year crop rotation. A rotation of crop types is essential when growing vegetables as certain crops are susceptible to pest and disease if repeatedly grown in the same plot every year. The planting plan enables specific crop types to be grouped together and rotated ideally through each of four raised beds from year to year.

Permanent bed labels are supplied for every Living Leaves Kitchen Garden design to identify the different beds and to make it easier to follow the four year crop rotation.

When a Living Leaves Kitchen Garden is purchased, the plants you receive along with your planting plan are recorded to ensure that you are always planting the right plants in the right beds in each year.

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Planting Tools

To make it as easy as possible to work out where to plant your vegetables we have designed a ruler that can be fixed to the Living Leaves raised bed and a unique ‘T’ square that shows the spacing required between different types of crops. This device also helps you to plant in a straight line to give a very clean and tidy look to the planted bed and makes effective use of space.

A planting dibber is provided as part of the Living Leaves system to help to create the perfect sized planting hole for your live plants.

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The Living Leaves Growing Guide

When your plants arrive by post you will need to look up the species in your planting plan to advise you on the bed to plant in and the distance along the bed measured on the bed ruler. You will then use the planting ‘T’ square to accurately position where each plant is to be planted.

The Guide will set out the tasks you need to do on a monthly basis - giving simple to follow instructions on how to plant, maintain and harvest your produce.

In addition to the hard copy of the Guide you will receive a monthly email reminding you of this month’s tasks along with photos of our own gardeners carrying out these jobs in our trial garden. We will be advising you on likely pests and diseases to be aware of.

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Delivery and Installation

We provide an installation service to new clients within 50 miles of Kinglsey subject to quotation, which will vary according to the size of garden to be constructed. This service can include initial advice on the siting of the garden, a simple design, the preparation of the site, delivery of all the materials required to build the garden including path materials, hedging plants, fruit trees, composts, structures etc. and installation.

These packs are designed to be installed by the purchaser or his or her local help and are easy to assemble with the use of a powerful electric screw driver hired from a local plant hire company to join the pre-drilled corner posts to the side boards with 16 mm long stainless steel torx head screws. Rectangular bed systems are often easy to assemble by a single person although longer and L shaped beds are awkward to handle with less than two pairs of hands. The cloche frames are supplied in kits and assembly requires two spanners. Covers are stretched over the cloche frame and fixed in place with snap fasteners round the bottom struts of the cloche frame, to complete assembly.

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Design Services

If you would like us to design your kitchen garden layout and help you to personalise your kitchen garden with non Living Leaves standard features we can provide a postal design service or a bespoke kitchen garden design through Alaster Anderson Gardens.

A Postal Kitchen Garden Design –

We provide you with a questionnaire about your garden and your requirements, once you have sent us your completed questionnaire we will create and send you a design for you kitchen garden.

A Bespoke Kitchen Garden – one of the Alaster Anderson design team will make an initial visit to survey your garden and take a design brief, we create a design for individual requirements and space.

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Prices and Ordering

You can order all our products by contacting our office on tel. 01420 479950 or email enquires@organicgardens.co.uk.

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RHS Wisley

Main geographical areas covered

Berkshire - Hampshire - London - Surrey - West Sussex
Living Leaves - The Grow Your Own SystemLiving Leaves Organic VegetablesLiving Leaves Organic Salads & HerbsLiving Leaves Hard & Soft FruitLiving Leaves Cut Flowers