Planting Sweet Peas at Cliff House: Small Sustainable Choices in Our Gardens

Up in our greenhouse at Cliff House Holiday Cottages, spring always starts in a practical way.

This week it was sweet peas. Planted into saved toilet roll tubes to encourage deep, strong roots, and filled with compost made here from garden waste collected over the year. It is not revolutionary gardening, but it is thoughtful, and it fits the rhythm of how we look after the cottages and grounds.

The tubes break down naturally once planted out, giving the roots space to stretch without disturbance. The compost closes a loop. Garden waste becomes nourishment, and the garden responds in kind. These small choices are part of how we try to reduce our footprint, bit by bit, rather than relying on grand gestures.

For us, sustainability at Cliff House is rarely about ticking boxes. It is about everyday habits that feel proportionate to the landscape we sit within. Reusing what we already have. Letting nature do some of the heavy lifting. Taking a longer view.

By summer, those early efforts usually show themselves. Sweet peas climbing frames near the cottages, scent drifting on warm evenings, and colour woven into the gardens that guests wander through during their stay. Many people notice the space, the planting, and the sense that things here are allowed to grow at their own pace.

If you book a stay with us later in the year, you may well see the fruits of this quiet work. Not as a feature, but as part of the backdrop to time spent outdoors, shared meals, and slower days at Cliff House Holiday Cottages.

Sometimes, it really is the small things that shape the bigger picture.