We’ve had so many customers tell us how fabulous our obelisks look in their gardens that we’re going to start posting photos on our blog pages. If you would like others to see how you’re making the most of our metal obelisks, arch, spheres or seats, email me a photo and I’ll put it on our site.

We were talking in the workshop today and realised it’s the beginning of May and we haven’t planted up our own obelisks.

So we’re going to cover them with quick, easy, colourful beans which will also hopefully give us some tasty veg.

For the arch we’ve chosen the runner bean Painted Lady which has beautiful red and white flowers (did you know the Victorians first introduced these as ornamental plants?) and for our classic obelisk we’re going to plant a mix of the French bean ‘The Prince’ which will give us lots of pencil sized green beans and a few borlotti beans which develop red splattered pods as they age.

We’ll harvest these borlotti when the pods are fully ripe and at their most colourful and use them as dried beans.

Beans like a really moist soil so we’re digging out a circular trench where the obelisks are to stand and adding some shredded soaked newspaper, a bit of garden compost and then backfilling with the soil. This will make a great base for the seeds.

We’ll then sow the beans directly into the soil about 5cm deep, pushing a seed in for every upright of the obelisk.

All going to plan these should be up in about 10-15 days (we’ll keep you posted). To play safe we’ll also sow some extras in individual pots in case of casualties.