The first half of May often felt colder than it should, with things growing slowly as a result. Then we had rain and a boost of warmth, and it has put a rocket under all the plants. This last week has seen unusually high temperatures for May. There is a lushness and with it comes the feeling that there are too many gardening jobs to do in the time available. We are now at the stage in the year when leaving things for a week means significant growth in weeds and grassy paths. The woad is in flower, which is much loved by insects and this year it’s in amongst brassicas, which are also now in flower. So, there is a riot of yellows in that part of the plot. The last few pickings of purple sprouting broccoli are being made, while broad beans are looking happy further along the same bed.

I spent a morning sorting through materials and weeding some of the growing beds. A neighbour enthusiastically gives me a load of dandelion stems at this time of year. It’s a great gift (for me – I understand not everyone would feel this way). They are picked and gathered together in a bag, which means I then need to sort through them, picking out the ones that are broken or too small to bother with, as well as removing closed flower heads still attached – I usually remove these as I pick, or ideally choose the ones that have already gone to seed and shed their clocks. The stems are now sorted and laid out to dry, alongside others I picked myself in the last few weeks.

I am often asked how to dry dandelion stems. All I do is lay them out on a covered wide shelf at the allotment, where there is plenty of air flow. I turn them every so often and eventually, when they’ve shrunk in size and shifted from fresh green to golden browns, they will get moved into the shed. Here they will still have plenty of air around them. At some point, when I am happy they are completely dry, I will put them into paper bags and take them home to store on open shelves in the studio. I haven’t made new work with dandelions during the last year (my focus has been mostly on flax), so I still have plenty of stems stored and ready for when I do want to work with them.

The dandelions are now giving way to buttercups – more yellows. Nettles are suddenly growing fast and will soon be ready for me to start stripping the fibre. Bindweed is also developing at pace and soon I’ll need to start gathering stems to stop them taking over where I don’t want them. The flax I sowed a few weeks ago is now starting to put on a little growth. I expect it to grow fast in the current warmth. But there have been deer visiting the plot and their hoof marks are all over the beds that have been recently cleared for sowing. In fact, I met a roe deer yesterday when I was preparing to strim the paths. It was hanging out under the lovely shady, seclusion of my apple trees and didn’t move until I came quite close. It then pottered off across my beds and onto neighbouring plots.

I’ve put some sticks round the flax patch to hopefully deter them from trampling it further. It may not be enough, but I hope it might keep them off this particular bed. In the nine years I’ve had this plot, I have only once seen deer here before this week, but their activity has clearly increased recently. I always net the soft fruit and brassicas, against birds mainly. Some of the remaining chard from last year has been munched, which is not a big problem, but makes me feel I might need to protect some of my crops more going forward. If I was a deer, then an allotment site would be a very attractive prospect – they can wander from plot to plot helping themselves to whatever they fancy.

So far, the tomatoes and chilli plants in the new poly-tunnel are happy and the temperature in there is significantly higher than outside. I’ve left the door wide open this week with this heat. I’ve been drying off daffodil leaves in the small greenhouse. These are leaves I gathered when they were starting to die down a couple of weeks ago. They have significantly reduced in volume and are just losing any remaining green to dry golden lengths. As with the dandelions, these will be moved to the shed for final drying and then eventually to my home studio.

I was visited recently at the plot by journalist Sally Cliffird and then by a photographer for the Yorkshire Post Magazine. We chatted about how I use my allotment to source my materials and how my practice has shifted to accommodate the unconventional materials and processes I use. The result was a lovely article in the Yorkshire Post Saturday magazine. It’s also available to read online here.

Currently on the loom at home is a new woven flax piece I’m making for the next exhibition at Jaggedart, London. This begins on 8^th June. I also have work showing in Yorkshire from 6^th June in Costing the Earth at South Square Centre, Bradford. I’m showing the set of ‘Safety nets’ I made last year for the Textile Study Group exhibitions at the British Textile Biennial. It’s great to have them showing again and this one is really local for me, which is a lovey bonus.

Costing the Earth aims to highlight the harmful environmental impact of fast fashion and the small actions we can take to make a positive difference.

Presenting work by Mandy Barker, Alice Fox, Hannah Lamb and Atiyya Mirza, Costing the Earth explores different ways contemporary artists are responding to the climate crisis. Each of the featured artists works with recycled or sustainably sourced materials to create photographic, sculptural, and textile artworks.

Curated by Jane Hiley, Costing the Earth is an Impressions Gallery offsite exhibition in partnership with South Square Centre, part of Impressions’ Summer of Sustainability.

Exhibition continues until 30 August 2026.

I’m just home from a lovely teaching trip to Moor Hall Studio in Shropshire. This beautiful part of the country takes me by surprise every time I visit. It’s such a quiet part of the country, tucked between busier parts of Shropshire and the Welsh border with rolling hills and lanes lined with wildflowers and bird song. The may blossom is just coming out, along with the froth of cow parsley. Bluebells line woods and verges and their smell, when they are on mass like that, is intoxicating. I heard my first cuckoo of the year, as well as such a chorus of small birds. I was teaching my Weaving the Land workshop, which I will next teach at Lund Studio in North Yorkshire in later June/early July. If you’d like to join there are still a few places available to book.

Lovely though it is to be away in different countryside and meeting interesting students, there is much to do at home and on the allotment. The poly-tunnel is now constructed on the plot, after a very busy two days in mid April with friends and family helping - helpers came from London, Dorset and Edinburgh to help. It was a proper team effort and I’m very grateful for the help to get the structure up and the plastic stretched and secured. We were very lucky with the weather on the weekend we had allocated (months ago) and we had a calm warm day for the crucial bit. I recorded a couple of hours on the Sunday morning with time-lapse and here is the result - you can see when we had a tea break!

The poly-tunnel is tucked in a space between my shed and my neighbour’s, and is in a good position to get sun through much of the day. There are still some jobs to finish on it, but the main work is done, and I’ve started creating beds inside ready to get the tomato plants, that are crowding my home windowsills, established in there.

I sowed my flax in mid-April and this is now showing small pairs of leaves, having germinated in the last couple of weeks. Other seeds are sown and continue to be sown regularly. I’ve had an odd batch of compost that I bought for starting off seeds and some things have failed, either not germinating at all or failing afterwards. I’m not sure if it’s a watering issue or something else. But I will keep trying and some things will work, even of not everything takes.

The couch grass roots that I set aside when I was weeding the ground where the poly tunnel is now sited (see my previous post) are now mostly arranged in a woven work - shown above. It’s a mixture of order and unruly, which is what I was hoping for. I’m hoping to work with some other roots to make this part of a series. A bunch of dandelions that were weeded out of the bed in preparation for planting my potatoes were put in a bucket to clean off some of the mud, and they valiantly flowered and seeded in the bucket – they really are the most tenacious of plants. Some of the growing beds are still full of self-seeders that have grown since the last crops were pulled up. I’ll work through these, as and when I need to plant new things in there.

The dandelions growing amongst long grass and on verges and in fields are now getting long stemmed and setting seed in their wonderful globes. I am collecting these when there is a chance, but I have most of last years (and possibly the year before) collection stored. I haven’t worked with dandelion stems much recently as I’ve been focusing on other materials. But at this time of year, I’m reminded of their wonderful qualities and can’t help picking the long ones when I get the chance. They’ll soon be mostly over and other plants will take over to appear in abundance.

My woven nest piece (see my post ‘How to weave a nest’ from January) that showed as part of the Textile Study Group’s UNmaking exhibition has now moved to Oxford, to the Bodleian Library as part of Wonder of Birds.

Inspired by The Book of Birds by Jackie Morris and Robert Macfarlane, Wonder of Birds celebrates the splendour of the birds around us at the same time as recognising the steep decline in bird populations across our skies in recent decades. Following the ‘Seven Wonders’ of birds – nest, egg, beak, song, feather, flight, migration – this exhibition pairs the words and art from The Book of Birds with Oxford ornithological research and Bodleian collections to explore the beauty and mystery of these extraordinary creatures.

I’m really thrilled that my Nest is included in the exhibition and I’m looking forward to attending the official opening this week. As the piece is now on show in Oxford for the rest of this year, I will be making new work to show in the second UNmaking exhibition when it moves to Stroud in September.

I’m getting a poly-tunnel (or ‘hoop house’ as they are known in some parts – such a lovely name). I’m excited about the potential to grow more and better tomatoes and cucumbers; plants that like a bit of heat. The current small greenhouse that I inherited with the plot is shaded much of the time and has never really given me the kind of tomato crop I cr…

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The day was forecast as the first sunny day for what feels like weeks. Sunshine was not essential, but an added bonus. This was the day set aside to prune the apple trees before then working away for the rest of the month. After days and weeks of rain and grey gloom, a day on the plot with blue sky, winter sunshine and no wind was restorative and satisf…

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I mentioned the bird’s nest I’ve had sitting at the allotment in a post almost a year ago (I’ve just been looking back to find the mention and am shocked to find a year has gone by…). It was last February when I took the nest home with the intention of working creatively with it somehow.

The nest was found on my allotment around the time I took the plot …

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The solstice comes and goes quietly, with dense cloud keeping light levels low. The air is damp and the allotment paths are slippery. My visit this week is dedicated to one of my ‘winter jobs’ – clearing half of the long bed which is meant for perennial vegetables. There is asparagus in one half, with ground cover of alpine strawberries. The other half …

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I’m looking out across the decidedly wintery Aire valley. No frost this morning, but a cold wind, bare trees and showers blowing in swiftly every so often. The allotment is also in winter mode now. Most of the apples have dropped, many still lie on the ground where the birds are pecking at the fruit. I take a couple of buckets home for our breakfast jui…

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The clocks changed last Sunday. If there was any remaining doubt about the shift in seasons, the end of British Summertime brings certainty. Leaves are turning, falling and gathering on pavements. Various plants on the plot are also taking on their autumn colouring. The asparagus ferns that were green are an almost luminous yellow. The cherry tree is a …

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I am writing this on the ferry back from Northern Ireland, having hung Flaxen at R-Space Gallery in Lisburn - shown above. It’s always interesting to take work to a new space, seeing where different opportunities to hang the work take it. The configuration of the space means that I couldn’t hang Flax Field 1-5 all as one 4-metre-long piece (as previousl…

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I’ve just arrived in rural southern France to teach later in the week. I came a bit early, partly to allow for settling in before teaching, but also to avoid potential travel disruption due to strikes. It has given me an extra day in this quiet place, to catch up on a few bits of admin, writing and to start exploring.

A walk up the lane from the house an…

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Over the last week or two there has been a shift in the state of things at the plot. We’ve had another prolonged hot, dry spell. The ground is dry, and the plants are showing it. Growth has slowed. Everything is going to seed and fruit. The lushness we had not so long ago is now parched and faded. There is a hint of autumn in the air. Just this week the…

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Today marks 100 days on from when I sowed my allotment flax back in April. I wrote about it here. 100 days is the standard length of time allowed from sowing flax to harvesting it. This involves pulling the whole plant up, roots and all, so that the maximum length of fibre can then be extracted from the stem. I harvested mine on day 97 this year because…

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During the busy run-up to the opening of Flaxen I was very pre-occupied with finishing the work and then away hanging the exhibition. The allotment was left to tick over pretty much in its own. A friend watered the greenhouse when I was away. Last week, back from Cornwall, I was able to give the plot some proper attention. The grass path down the side o…

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Flaxen is the culmination of two years of engagement with the quiet, beautiful place that is Kestle Barton. The project has grown organically, from tentative early conversations alongside visits to spend time with my daughter, then studying at Falmouth University. Workshops given in return for residency time at Kestle Barton evolved into the idea of gro…

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It’s that time again when the dandelions are suddenly turning from their cheery yellow flowers to delicate spheres of seed, ready to be carried away on the breeze. This always feels to me like the beginning of the gathering year. Dandelion stems have become one of my staple materials to work with and a firm favourite due to their in-built flexibility an…

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During this past couple of weeks I’ve been preparing some of the allotment beds for the growing season, starting to weed and clear the ground after the winter fallow period. As I weed and turn over the earth, I find fragments of pottery coming to the surface. I love these little pieces of history, re-surfacing treasure. I collect them up and arrange the…

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A brief post today, just to give you a heads-up on a new online workshop series I’m starting soon: Cordage Club. This new workshop will consist of a series of three online sessions delivered live via Zoom, spread monthly over the (UK) fibre growing and foraging season from May to July.

Session dates: Mondays 5th May, 2nd June, 7th July at 7pm UK time.
Boo…

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Spring is definitely in the air. We’ve had some prolonged dry, bright spells with blue skies and sunshine. We’ve passed the milestone of the equinox and now there is anticipation of the clocks changing at the end of the week, bringing lighter evenings and that definite shift into the growing season.

The peach blossom, now fading, has been glorious. This …

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My relationship with the allotment changes with the seasons. There are times of year when I am there almost daily, times when there are lots of regular jobs to do during the growing and harvesting seasons. In winter everything slows down. There is less to do on a regular basis as growth reduces and plants and soil do their resting. But ther…

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8^th February

I’m back in Cornwall on the next part of my residency at Kestle Barton. Staying for a couple of weeks provides a chance to pin down what I want to make for my exhibition here in the summer and to gather materials relevant to that work. The flax that we grew here last year will be the main focus of the exhibition and I have plans for some lar…

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