Ferdinand

Personally I would look more at breezeblocks.

can you elaborate 9n the Vext Axia issue? I have a lot of these installed.

That's nearly 5k worth of topsoil at retail and delivered prices...

Since my herb wall is likely to be entirely in 4” or similar plantpots, regularly renewed, horseradish will probably not be present. Or turnip !

That may be true, but you still need to reckon with cooking. in extremis, you could fit one of those mist systems in just that area.

i’m Going to a winter garden walk at Hardwick on Tuesday, so may come back with a list of shallow rooted harvestable-young annual herbs suitable for small plant pots in a herb wall ? . @Sue B you might enjoy treetop onions if kelp under control, or shallots.

There are a number of systems out there which use interlocking concrete blocks. If you dig in the( forum or the blogs, perhaps via Google, there are many threads.

This has actually made my week - especially as I am currently having a miserable couple of months. As far as I am concerned the highest purposes / achievements of BH are 3 things: 1 - If someone has a more attractive, comfortable, better designed or otherwise more satisfying house to live in than would otherwise be the case. 2 - Ditto higher quality construction. 3 - Ditto more energy efficient. 4 - Ditto quality of decisions. 5 - Keeping more sane / balanced / thoughtful / less stressed throughout. It really can make one plus one come to three. Thanks @simplepimple. Such comments make what time we all put in in our various ways worthwhile imo.

Dye the cat ? I swapped all mine over in 2013, and tbh I have not noticed any problems - except that I have had to swap out single hanging fittings for new ones with several LED bulbs as I seem to notice dim light. It may be that I am not sensitive to the tone. I swapped mainly GU10s to the then Ikea LED bulbs, and I still have a quantity of compact fluorescent bulbs still going strong.

Limit yourself to my threads and you will be fine. Completely banjaxed in the brain, but fine. ? (Why do you think the rest of understand it?)

Presumably one with teeth....

Is not the challenge with hydroponics that you have to mix your taste from the nutrients?

As it happens I am within 20 mins drive of the huge NT herb garden at Hardwick Hall so a dozen visits between Feb and July to quiz the staff will work wonders. My sister did that in her teens for her herb garden. Also happen to be a life member :-). Best Graduation present ever.

Have you considered a built in planter to the same height and depth dimension as the bench?

Aubergines and figs...

So at the current UK CO2 emissions equivalent that is very very roughly 2 person years of carbon emissions. I am not sure of the conversion factors from carbon to CO2 conversion which presumably involves a doo dah diddle with molecular and atomic masses, three assumptions, and 4 fiddle factors. Also ignoring variations in claims about CO2 per capita emissions and calling it 5-10 tonnes per person per annum ish. F

Incidentally, does anyone have a number for how much carbon is sequestered by a house insulated with cellulose for the next century?

That is quite an interesting insight. One thing we noticed there was an ancient (=probably 18C) yew tree which had drifts of needles underneath to a depth of several feet .. which must have been there for the best part of half a century. And amazing quality composts type soil beneath that which must have been the previous generations of needles. The further point about sequestration being an interim for 50-100 years to blunt the peak is an important one. Long life big trees which will grow for 200-300 years can perhaps go a long way to that on their own .. eg beeches, sweet chestnuts, turkey oaks etc. (The garden had been laid out by the mid-Victorians and not really changed. There was even a marked ‘turning for coaches’ circle around a particular weeping ash tree). F

@MaryM Suspect that microclimate is also important, so this is a sketch of my setup and a couple of piccies. My conservatory links the lounge and kitchen on the NW corner, and gets bright light but little or no direct sunlight, which is my recipe for 3.5 season conservatories without horrible technical bodges like huge heating / cooling systems. it is well insulated .. 100mm Celotex In walls and floor ... and has a modest electric ufh system. Also 2 walls are against internal rooms. So I think it can be termed a Temperate Conservatory. The way it is used is that the internal patio doors to kitchen and lounge are kept open from approx April to Oct to give a single living space and closed for the remainder. These are plans and piccies. The sofa is being junked and the green wall will go where the current hat display is located. Hoping to rig up a tank on the high windowsill to do drip watering, set to be manually refilled once a week or so so that the tank will run dry and keep it bug free every few days. If necessary I could actually put one of those mini lean to greenhouses there, butI think the environment should be OK. Those cactususes really thrive with no attention. only issue might be humidity, but I think auto watering and damp soil should fix that locally.

I think you may be looking for the heat pump version of air con unit which works through a single penetration where both pipes go through where all the gubbins is inside.the property and no External unit. @PeterW has some knowledge, but essentially they are an air con or heat pump which sits inside your room and has a single outlet for both pipes and no external unit. Think you are into 1-2k but there is little alternative. Unico Easy is one model I think. I am planning one, but I think @lizzie may have done one already. I plan to fit one in my S facing lounge to manage summer overheat if I keep the current house after probate for mum etc is done and I buy other family out. We touched on them in passing on this thread:

Really useful. thanks, Yes I have rampant mint in its own frame in the garden, and also rosemary. TBH I do not use rosemary much. Lemon balm is a good suggestion. Wonder about sorrel? I think there is also a technique to learn about replanting several times a year, and rotating new little pots of herbs and micro veg (which are harvested too young to regenerate) across the face of the wall in ‘pulses’. That would keep them all young and juicy. Amd also perhaps it may be a good idea to focus on flavourings and garnishes .. so the spring onions are good. In one sense treating perennials as annuals May be a good technique. Also some hanging fruit seem to be good on external living walls, but that may not fit mine .. which I think may be a 1m x 1m space to start. But I am new to this. F

cannot recommend specifics, but my normal suggestion is to go for a reasonably sized local practise big enough to have specialists should you need them but not regional sized so as to be big enough to have major pretensions to treat you as a Vanderbilt. In my area I have used firms with several offices and a number of partners, but which are still small enough to be considered local firms. In Somerset that might be a well established town firm rather than panjandrums from Bristol. On one or two occasions having the extra internal expertise of a small specialist eg land dept has been really useful. In terms of value I would look for extra expertise available that your person can consult with internally on tap rather than cutting top line fees to the bone. The person who bought our old house with deeds going back to copperplate days a few years ago used a fixed price type online solicitor and they got totally tangled up in land ownership adjustments left over from when the M1 was built and the lane realigned; refused to believe we had a right to drive into our own drive! Hope that helps from a different angle. Ferfinand

Can you use steels?

For herbs I think Thyme MArjoram Chives parsley chervil dill

So which herbs work well. And if I add in veg, which veg? My first veg thoughts are radishes and cut and come again lettuce.