This patch is usually home to climbing 'Cosse Violette' beans, golden beetroot, Venetian pumpkins, dahlias, carrots and sweet peas. I fill any gaps with tomatoes, usually Costelluto Fiorentio and Marmande, which do well in this space, which gets the full force of the sun from midday onwards.

Winter 2009/2010. The spinach turned to emerald green slush after the first heavy snowfall. The purple kale is less than happy. But the two rows of curly kale are still in fine fettle at the tail end of January. I have left the pea sticks wrapped around the frame used by the beans in the hope they will do another year. Good-sized ones are so difficult to find. I will plant garlic in this bed in a week or two. It should have gone in the autumn, to produce a stronger plant next summer, but like so many things, I never got round to it.

Autumn 2009. The peas have now been replaced by two long rows of green kale. The frilly green plumes are currently covered by hazel twigs in an attempt to keep the foxes from trampling them. The borlotti beans have done well, a few long, mottled pods still in place on the tall hazel poles they are using a climbing frame. The extra water they got this year has proved worth it, with the vines taller than those I have grown before and with far more pods. The dahlias, huge deep red and spiky are pushing their way up through the Marmande tomatoes. A great success are the Green Zebra tomatoes, which are ripening in shades of deep green and amber at the moment. Indian Prince marigolds and large yellow courgettes are turning this bed into the most extraordinarily beautiful part of the garden.

Summer 2009. The peas have been an extraordinary success this year, and have been enjoyed as much for their charming fairy-like tendrils as much as for their pea pods. Close planting, barely a few centimentres between each seed, proved a successful way of sowing. The borlotti beans, their long pods in shades of deepest crimson and cream were ready to harvest in late July. Such a beautiful addition to the garden are these beans (they were grown for their ornamental qualities long before they were ever used for food) they are already on my list for next year. From mid July the courgettes have kept coming almost non-stop, the yellow variety being the most prolific. At Lammas the bed was a riot of Marmande tomatoes (as yet unripe), borlotti, dinner-plate dahlias in shades of burgundy and saffron and towers of bolted perputual spinach. In ten years I never seem this bed looking more beautiful.

Spring 2009. There are two rows of peas - Feltham First and the purple mange tout Carouby de Mausanne - already clinging on to old fashioned pea-sticks coppiced from Richmond Park. Scarlet and cream Borlotti Beans are just poking through the soil in the middle of the bed around their frame of hazel sticks, the occasional lavender and cream sweet pea amongst them to atract the bees. Two courgettes plants grown from seed, Striato d'Italia and a golden variety that produces particularly small and delicate fruits, have just gone in. Separating the peas, beans and squash are new strawberry plants: Florence, Garrigue and a new variety called Chelsea Pensioner that I spotted at last years Chelsea Flower Show. This year I have been spot-watering instead of saturating the entire bed, partly to save water, and partly to keep the snails at bay. Some perpetual spinach seed I spilled by accident seems to have sprouted here too, giving the bed a rather chaotic and strangely munificent (for Spring) appearance.

Winter 2009. The greengage tree has been dug out. My fault for ordering the wrong rootstock. The appearance was rather upright and 'commercial' and was out of place with the more characterful and interesting trees close by. The bed is now resting, apart from a row of feisty purple carrots, holding on in there throughout this cold winter. This bed will be home to scarlet runners this year, rows of ruby chard and beetroot.

Autumn 2008. There is something curiously romantic about a vegetable bed at the end of its season. The dried stems of the late squashes crisping in the last of the autumn sun, the final few nasturtiums holding on till the first frosts, and here and there a shining yellow squash. The carrots are doing exceptionally well. The Purple Dragon are crisp and a gentle violet colour; the Nantaise chubbier than I had expected whilst the Guerand has been a little shy and is far behind the other two. In truth the carrots are still too close together. One of the few garden jobs I don't enjoy is thinning carrots and I tend to leave it too late. That said, the infant carrots, the size of my little finger, are intensely sweet and cook in a minute or two. I let them steam for three minutes at most. No butter. I eat them just as they are, or toss them in a squeeze of lemon juice and walnut oil.

Summer 2008. A fox cub has taken to sleeping under the sweet pea frame. He looks cute beyond words, but is damaging the roots of the dark coloured sweet peas and the runner beans that are shooting up to take their place. I have put a sonic Foxwatch device in the bed to deter him. There are plenty of other places he can sleep, though few as fragrant. There are three squashes to the right of the bed: Connecticut Field, Uchiki Kuri - the deep orange onion-shaped squash - and Cocozelle, a green striped variety of marrow from 1885. They are protected by bamboo cloches and coffee grounds to deter the snails.
       To the left there are three varieties of carrot. Nantaise, which is enjoying the shade from the greengage and de Guerande, which isn't. Bushiest of the three is Purple Dragon, a yellow variety with violet skin. I will soon start thinning, and hopefully make a salad with the first tiny carrots. Also in this bed is a patch of Hamari Gold Dahlias and tangerine nasturtiums that seem to have seeded themselves. The red velvet sunflowers, usually so much a part of this garden failed to germinate this year.

Spring 2008 . Sweet peas, including the ancient Cupani, Lord Nelson and the sultry Black Knight are already climbing their frame in the centre of the bed. I have put in a row of Ailsa Craig onions, currently the thickness of a spring onion inter-planted with spiky Lingua di Canarino lettuces. They are protected by a circle of spent coffee grounds, as an alternative to the organic slug pellets I used last year. The idea came to me from BBC's Gardener's World and appeals to me on several levels. Time will tell if Monmouth Coffee's Brazilian Rodomonho is as popular with the garden's snails as it is with me.
    Beetroot has gone into this bed too, the Italian Chioggia variety with its alternate pink and white rings. Early Nantes carrots are currently being a little shy, but hopefully will show their heads soon enough. Amongst the French carrots and Italian beetroot are signs of the Hamari Gold Dahlias whose young shoots are just peeping through the soil. (May 9th)
    Last night the fox cubs who live in the next door garden found their way into the netting tunnel that protected the young carrot seedlings and squashed them flat. I will re-sow by the end of the month.

Winter 2007. The bed is sleeping. Two giant foxgloves have sown themselves in the dark wet soil. I have no intention of moving them, but will leave them to mingle with whatever goes in the bed this year.

The sweet peas usually go in around the climbing frame in early May. Last year I also planted two rows of golden beetroot and a few Velvet Queen sunflowers. The sunflowers did better than the beetroot. There are often Cosse Violet beans; more sunflowers - the chestnut flowered Autumn Beauty - and a couple of Venetian pumpkins, whose green warty skins hide a promise of sweet orange flesh. They were unsuccessful this year due to an invasion of inquisitive snails. The dark red Dahlia (Chat Noir) that seems to thrive in the corner of this bed has sent up a batch of bright new shoots as if to let us know the summer on its way. Dotted all over the dark soil were leafy potato shoots (Charlotte) which seem to sow themselves. Although they were not on the plan for this bed this season I saw no reason to disturb them, and will dig them up only when I need their place for the young pumpkin plants.

Summer 2007 - The sweet peas have done well here, the best this year being The Doctor, a clear lilac-pink variety and heavily fragrant. The summer's constant rain, however beautiful it is to hear, has caused an upsurge in the number of snails. They ate the entire first crop of Violette beans. A second batch of young plants is due to go in during late July. The courgette flowers - Striato d'Italia - are producing long flowers like great golden trumpets. Few fruit yet, but there is plenty of time. We dug the Charlotte potatoes in early July. They were in the pot within minutes. We ate them with creme fraiche and fresh dill. There are tiny patty pan squash here too, and the first bright yellow fruits appeared in early July. We wait for them to plump up. As this bed gets the best of the sun, I have planted a dozen sweetcorn, in the hope we might just get enough sun to ripe it.