New arrivals to our vintage garden section.

I have just popped these two new 'vintage american drinks crates' onto the Urban Eden Boutique website.

I love the look of them & I have seen them used for all kinds of things, mounted onto walls as a shelving unit or grouped together as four with glass on top for a retro coffee table but I love them as they are, I have one filled with magazines and in the summer months I grow salad leaves in another outside the back door which looks lovely & works really well.

For more details on our vintage crates pop along to Urban Eden Boutique

Great Gift Ideas!

I found these great vintage 'pick your own' trugs and instantly thought that they would make great gift baskets for our hand care, plant labels & other goodies, at the moment if you buy three or more items from the boutique they will come gift wrapped in one of these lovely trugs free of charge, so pop along to Urban Eden Boutique and have a look at our great gift ideas for gardeners.

Vintage wire

I have just popped some lovely new vintage wire pieces onto the web site, I love them all and as always with our vintage goodies would happily keep them all too!

They are so versatile and can be used for many a job, be it indoors to store candles, kindling or in the kitchen for eggs. Outdoors filled with herbs or salad leaves, or simply used as trugs to fetch & carry from the potting shed.

 

for more details on our vintage garden accessories pop along to Urban Eden Boutique

Elderflower fizz take 2!

It's that time of year again, we have been looking forward to making our Elderflower wine as it was so lovely last year, we are making a bit more this year to hand out to friends & family as gifts.

We use the 'River Cottage' recipe as it is so simple to do & tasty.

We did go down to the lane behind the allotment last week on a lovely sunny day but the flowers were not quite out.

So we left it a week & went back on a not so sunny (rainy) day to gather the flowers.

As you can see we did Ok this time! There are still lots out there for you to give it a go, 

Enjoy it with some home grown strawberries, heaven!

Here is the  recipe...

• 4 litres hot water

• 700g sugar

• Juice and zest of four lemons

• 2 tablespoons white wine vinegar

• About 15 elderflower heads, in full bloom

• A pinch of dried yeast (you may not need this)

METHOD

How to make elderflower champagne

1. Put the hot water and sugar into a large container (a spotlessly clean bucket is good) and stir until the sugar dissolves, then top up with cold water so you have 6 litres of liquid in total.

2. Add the lemon juice and zest, the vinegar and the flower heads and stir gently.

3. Cover with clean muslin and leave to ferment in a cool, airy place for a couple of days. Take a look at the brew at this point, and if it's not becoming a little foamy and obviously beginning to ferment, add a pinch of yeast.

4. Leave the mixture to ferment, again covered with muslin, for a further four days. Strain the liquid through a sieve lined with muslin and decant into sterilised strong glass bottles with champagne stoppers (available from home-brewing suppliers) or Grolsch-style stoppers, or sterilized screw-top plastic bottles (a good deal of pressure can build up inside as the fermenting brew produces carbon dioxide, so strong bottles and seals are essential).

5. Seal and leave to ferment in the bottles for at least a week before serving, chilled. The champagne should keep in the bottles for several months. Store in a cool, dry place.

Our vintage drinks crates are back!

Our fantastic vintage drinks crates are back, I must admit that last time we had them I did keep one for myself just in case we couldn't get them again, it now resides in my bathroom full of home & garden magazines ready to dip into when I am in the bath! It adds a great retro touch to the room, they do look cool in the garden too, planted up with herbs or salad leaves.
Vintage crates are now becoming more rare as they get snapped up.

I will be adding more crates to our website over the next few days so keep a look out!

The 7 Up crate & Dr Pepper crate are already on there & can be found *HERE*

Helen

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French Galvanised Planter

We have this great vintage french galvanised planter with handles, new into the Boutique. 
It will look fantastic planted up with lavender or thyme & it will look just as great utilised in the home for kindling by the fire or to store magazines in by the chair!
The planter is in great vintage condition and is water tight.it measure  23 cm high 26 cm diameter & can be found *HERE*

Gifts for little Gardeners!

Hope you have had a fab May Bank Holiday, I have been making the most of the break in the clouds & have been photographing these fab little gift ideas which are new to Urban Eden Boutique. They are suitable for ages 3 & up and are a great way to encourage kids to get out in the garden & to see some results for themselves, they are called 'My Patch' & come with a large plant label saying 'This garden belongs to...' tied to the label is a box containing seeds and a little shaped hand-made soap to encourage children to wash their hands when they have finished planting.

They come in 3 different varieties, Sunflower seeds with a cute flower shaped soap, carrot seeds with a rabbit shaped soap & flower seeds to attract Bees & Butterflies with a Bumble Bee soap. They are £4.00 & they can be found *HERE*

Dib, Dib, Dib!!

This lovely vintage dibber has been added to our boutique today, the old ones really are the best & made to last, this dibber looks so lovely & will be a fab addition to any gardeners potting shed, it is £9.00 & can be found  *HERE*
I have lots of new products for the boutique, I just need a sunny day to photograph everything!! So watch this space!
Helen x

Vintage Garden Accessories - Sprinkler

This fantastic fully restored Cooper Stewart - Rain King' sprinkler is british made using cast iron with brass fittings, simply push a hose on, no need for attachments. It is £28 & can be found HERE.

Helen x

New vintage garden goodies!

Well I have at last got around to photographing some more vintage items for the web site, as always these have been hand picked by myself & Col, & we have made sure that everythinhg is in great vintage condition, with this I mean that although our items are full of vintage charm with some wear & tear from loving use over the years they are all still in full working order & have plenty more years of pleasure in them for a new home.

This fantastic vintage 2.5 litre galvanised watering can will make a keen gardener very happy indeed, they are hard to come by now all intact with the copper rose but this is a cracker, in the summer months when it will be in full use it will look great simply stood by a flower bed or on the patio, in the winter months we do advise that you store them in a shed or indoors as heavy frosts can make the bottoms of them 'belly' if they have water in them from any rain fall.

Coming soon.....These fantastic vintage coat hooks are made from old teak doors which were no longer in use, how perfect to use the great character of the wood instead of throwing it away or burning it, teak is a very durable wood & requires no oil or treatment when used outside, so these hooks can even be hung outdoors if needed although I thought they would be a fantastic addition to a potting shed.

This I need some help with! It is Dutch & I bought it as I thought it would make a really great handy water butt in the summer months, but I do not know what its original use is, Col thinks it may be from a milkmaids yoke which makes sense but it is my natural reaction to disagree with him!! Anyway they do work well as a water butt with a lovely vintage feel.

For all of these & more vintage garden items please visit www.urbanedenboutique.co.uk

Helen
x

Wynyard Hall Spring Fayre...

We have got our place booked at the Wynyard Hall Spring Shopping Fayre and we are really looking forward to it, we have had a hectic year so far as we are in the middle of doing up a house & hope to move in in the next 6 weeks so fingers crossed we will have enough time to get ready for the fayre too!!
 Wynyard hall is based in the Tees Valley area & now is a four star country hotel, it has an interesting history (read more HERE) & is a truly stunning building.
 The fayre is being held on Saturday the 28th April & Sunday 29th, have a look at their web site HERE for more details, it is £3.00 entry for adults & children under 12 go free.

Setting up at the fayre for a few days means we can show some of our larger items which we do not sell online due to postage costs, packing is difficult on some large items too, this is a shame as often the larger items make a big statement & always look great in the garden.
Here are a few examples of what we will be taking along with us.....

Vintage Dutch apple crates from the 50's & 60's, these are fab for layering up with stored fruit & veg for the winter months in the potting shed, they look great too with the vintage lettering, each farming family would put their name on the side of the crates so that their fruit crates were not stolen or mixed up at harvest time.
£12 each

Wooden fold away chairs, great sturdy chairs which will hang or stack neatly folded when not in use.
£15 each

Fully restored vintage wooden step ladders, these work really well as bookshelves indoors or filled with plant pots in a garden or yard

From £35 depending on size of ladders

Hope to see you there!

Helen

Salvaged Mill Bobbin & Twine

Fantastic reclaimed mill bobbins. Each of these authentic mill bobbins has been used in an English working mill in the last century or beyond. These bobbins look great in your home & garden. They can be found HERE 

A lovely book to read....

THE MAN WHO PLANTED  TREES

(Guerilla tree planting)

We received a wonderful book as a Christmas present from my brother; 'The Man Who Planted Trees' by Jean Giono.

The book was written in the 1950’s but its message was way ahead of its time,

inspiring readers to rediscover the beauties of the countryside & try to prevent its willful destruction.

Giono’s allegorical tale is legendary, the narrator of the book is travelling alone across the lower plains of the Alps when he meets a shepherd who has chosen to dedicate himself to re-foresting his desolate landscape with the help of a few acorns.

The book is also illustrated with wonderful woodcuts by Harry Brockway, which fit perfectly with the theme & make it a real pleasure to read.

The character of the shepherd ‘Elzeard Bouffier’ has got be the first example of a 'guerrilla gardening' & got me thinking about planting a few trees as well as flowers & plants!!