I'm envious, too! I would strongly urge you to get a map of the London Underground as well for the London area. I was there 10 years ago and there wasn't much we couldn't get to that we wanted to see (including Kew) that wasn't too far from the Tube. (Oh, that we had something like that in L.A.!) And no, it wasn't creepy like you might expect a subway. Of course your mileage may vary, but if you plan ahead, you can take advantage of discounting by buying several days or however it works, I don't remember anymore. London city may be the worst of driving by car so you won't miss anything except angina ;-) We also found the Tube to run often enough for convenience. Whatever you do, Mind the Gap!!!! 'Nother thought in London if you have time, there are walking tours here and there, most meet near a Tube station. Most tour guides have some sort of schedule. We took the evening Jack the Ripper tour by a guy that wrote a book on him, as he was the most recommended. Your taste may vary! But there are all kinds of these for what was reasonable pricing. A good time filler per one's interest and time offered. You might also do the London bus tour early on to get an over view of the city and decide what you'd like to see. If you have time for anything not garden related (!?!), the most wonderful time we had was at the Tower of London / White Tower where King Henry killed many of his wives, and little princes were bricked up in the masonry and so on. As I recall, there are also replicas of the crown jewels, the armory (fascinating!), the tower ravens, and many, many more things. I cannot begin to say what a good time it was and we both wished that we had planned a FULL day to take it all in, imho, if you see nothing else touristy in London, this is a MUST see. The Beefeaters were MOST excellent tour guides. If you're lucky, you might also find one of your relative's names carved in stone before they were executed! Alas, poor cousin Henry T!!! My cousin wanted to go to the pottery district, dunno about pricing with the dollar now, but we both got stuff for ourselves and Christmas presents. We went to Wedgewood only due to time (took the train, I think from Manchester, I'm not sure) but worth a stop for you if it is on your way to somewhere else just for the tour of how they make the china. There are many other companies like Spode in the area so something to check ahead to see if it fits in (if you do buy, we had our pieces shipped home). Nowadays with these shops more common over here and online, I dunno that it's worth to stop to buy except for the memory, but again, the tour was a great memory of something we don't have over here. Have fun!!!

This is great reading about everyone's plans. When I'm snowed in during the winter I always think about all the ambitious plans for the garden. I usually have one big project going on (last year it was the new backyard area where we did manage to get about 13 trees and 60 or so shrubs planted). This year I'm going to work on moving more plant material into that area (it's a pretty large area and I like to plant fairly close so I don't have to mulch). I have about 35 shrubs to relocate into that area and then bunches of perennials will be moved in. I really need to get my daylilies divided (which is my resolution in the New Year Resolution thread, so I must get that done this year....been thinking about doing it for about three). I'm going to divide them and then plant multiple divisions of the same daylily together in the backyard to give big impacts of color. My mom and I are heading to Paris in the late spring (with a trip to Monet's garden), so I need to curtail my garden spending which is why I'm hoping to do more transplanting in the garden as opposed to buying more plant material. Now for all my questions!! LL- do you find any herbs in particular keep the deer away. I've heard they really don't like lavender. Do the herbs keep them away from the garden, or do they just not eat those particular plants? Token, are all those WS soda bottles in your picture on the other thread for your meadow garden? Hollygarden, I think I like your plan better than your DH's! Raised diagonal beds sound great! Scully, I love that sweet pea vine. How long does it bloom? GGG, what is a "bottle border" pathway?

Mia, Yes , I think it will work. Interplanting tomatoes with other crops is something I do all the time. I often grow smaller plants like lettuce and carrots underneath and between tomato plants, essentially using them as a living mulch beneath the taller tomato plants. I also mix all kinds of herbs into the tomato beds as well, and think those herbs help explain how I grow so many tomato plants and yet only rarely see even a single tomato hornworm or fruit worm. You sometimes will get less yield per plant when you interplant multiple kinds of crops together using close spacing, but since you have a lot more plants occupying the soil, you still get a good harvest . The best carrot crop I ever had was a result of me broadcast sowing lettuce and carrot seed randomly into the tomato bed after the tomato plants already had been transplanted into the ground. My garden was smaller then and I had run out of space, so was packing as much into each bed as I possibly could. I just thinned carrots and lettuce after they sprouted. When I grow onions with tomato plants, normally I hammer a stake into the ground where each tomato plant will be planted later, and leave a small unplanted spot there as I plant the onions. When it it time to transplant the tomato plants into the ground, I put one tomato plant next to each stake. If I have to pull up a couple of onions to make room for a tomato transplant, it isn't a big deal . We eat those onions as scallions. I started interplanting multiple types of plants together long ago, after reading John Jeavon's book "How To Grow More Vegetables...." book. It is amazing how much you can pack into even a small space when you interplant. Even when I grow tomato plants in molasses feed tubs, I generally have pepper plants, herbs and flowers mixed into each container with the tomato plants. Look at how Mother Nature mixes everything up together. On the eastern edge of our woodland, for example, we have native pecan and oak trees growing as the dominant plants, but underneath them we have wild cherries, American persimmons, possumhaw hollies, and redbuds, and beneath those understory trees we have American beautyberry bushes, native blackberries, inland sea oats and brushy bluestem, peppervines and several native wildflowers which ebb and flow with the seasons. All of them happily co-exist. Why can't our gardens be the same way? To garden bio-intensively in this manner, you need to pay careful attention to soil fertility and irrigation (if adequate rainfall is not being received). Obviously when you interplant several types of edible crops together, the plants will be competing with one another. I get smaller onions in interplanted beds than I get from onions grown in a monoculture with recommended spacing, but still get tons of onions. We still have several dozen onions from last year's crop, though now they are starting to sprout. There pretty much is nothing grown in our veggie garden that isn't interplanted with several other things. If I ever were to plant even one single monoculture bed, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't like the way it looked and would be out there trying to fix the bed by adding more stuff to it. In fact, I do have my onions planted as monoculture beds right now, but that is because they are the only thing I've put into the ground so far this year. The onions will not be alone in those beds for long. Hope this helps , Dawn

I love garden tours. Wish I could've gone to this one. We need to remember to watch for it next year. Did anyone go? I'd love to see photos.