My interest in gardening came from my late Father, David Oddy, who was a very keen gardener and in the 1960's showed at the Exeter Annual Flower Show which took place in Bury Meadow Park back in the day.
He took his vegetable growing very seriously and I think it became too much so eventually he stopped showing and concentrated on the garden and his growing family. He later became interested in guitar making and over the years became a renowned Luthier particularly within the Folk Music community, my Brother Nick Oddy is now carrying on the business.
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As well as vegetables I remember he grew Chrysanthemums, Begonias and standard Fuchsias all of which he showed and won many prizes for. He also had an allotment and I used to 'help' him there as well as in the garden and that's where I got the gardening bug and learnt much of what I know about growing veg, although a lot of it is still 'trial and error' !
The newspaper clipping is from the September 1968 Express & Echo, my younger sister, Alyson, came along exactly one year later ! |
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Just over 30 years ago I moved to Moulton to a house with a good sized garden, the house needed 'some' work but that's another story ! The back garden is some 250 feet long with a small orchard at the very bottom and just before that I have created a vegetable plot in which I try to grow pretty much every vegetable you can think of. I don't take it as seriously as my Father, its just for fun although it doesn't seem like that in the couple of days up to the annual show when it gets a bit hectic !
I am a member of the Moulton and District Gardeners' Society which has monthly meetings at the nearby Community Centre and I look forward to the annual Flower Show which takes place late summer.
The driver for this website was to encourage more members to start growing fruit and veg for entry in the Flower show !
For those thinking of growing for the show here some useful links to lists of suitable varieties:
I've started writing a Garden Diary to show what I've been doing in the garden and will add further pages with useful stuff as time goes by:
Chris Oddy
(Please note I have no connection with any of the suppliers mentioned on the website - just a satisfied customer)
