How does the garden grow?

As anyone who buys fine green beans in Sainsburys knows, agriculture is a major source of exports here. The mix of equatorial sun, warmth and a good rainfall around Nairobi all make for great growing conditions. There is a saying that if you plant a stick it will grow. Its very lush on the coast too, with cashews and coconuts everywhere. We drove past miles and miles of pineapple fields on our way to Mombasa the other week - a new sight for us all. Green beans and asparagus are shipped abroad along with the best of the Kenyan tea and coffee crops, although there's a growing market for good coffee in Nairobi (if at a price beyond most Kenyans and honestly not entirely related to the various mums I hang out with). And there's a major flower industry around Lake Naivasha, about an hour from Nairobi. Huge bunches of roses can be bought at most roadside corners in Nairobi for the equivalent of a couple of pounds.


There are some less good aspects of this industry - lake Naivasha has been heavily polluted by nutrients running off the flower farms and is now massively over run by water hyacinths - the equivalent of Japanese knot weed. Katie and Matthew spent a happy hour clearing the Lodge's pond of this weed when we stayed near the lake with my mum but I'm sure a month later it will all be back. It's the same in lake Victoria and a real challenge for environmentalists - there are some projects trying to turn these plants into biomass as a source of energy and one guy we met who advises the PM here is very optimistic about one of these. The flower industry is also apparently cleaning up its act (or so I reassure myself when I can't resist the lovely blooms) so fingers crossed something works soon as some beautiful places are being rapidly damaged.

Back at home, and fertiliser free (if you ignore the manure from our driver/gardener's cow) we are enjoying the fruits of our garden - squash, beans, chillies, potatoes, spinach, salad, fennel and rhubarb with regular bunches of bananas. Katie happily crunches though sunflower seeds too, harvested and dried from her sunflowers in September - the next crop is doing well and she's looking forward to showing the cycle of seed to flower to seed in her science lessons this term as part of learning how things grow.


















The maize and avocados look like they will be ready soon too, and the Passion flower I planted on the back wall in July is about to fruit.

And with luck we will get to them before the monkeys who we spotted in our road the other week find them.

I would love to claim credit for any of this but I can't really. The hard work has all been done by Bernard who is clearly a farmer at heart who also drives, looks after the kids, does my shopping, advises me on life in Kenya and generally provides life support for our household. Tim has put his back into the garden too, building steps through the bananas and working out how to direct the torrents of water that rip through the garden when it rains away from the veg - the hours we have spent building waterways and damns with the kids on rainy UK beaches are paying off!

Standing with Bernard earlier, harvesting beans in the mid morning sun with beautiful birds flying round us and then reading about snow and fog and minus temperatures in the UK really did make me feel on the other side of the world.


Anne