Spring in the garden June 26, 2025

As you have no doubt noticed, it’s all systems grow in the garden at the moment. For the past few months, the first job of the day has been water, water, water and now that it has actually rained a little, the garden has really taken off.

Fruit and vegetable crops

The warm weather has definitely had an impact, and we’re seeing the potential for some really good fruit from our orchard later in the year. We’ve also been enjoying some early crops – we planted ‘Aquadulce Claudia’ beans and ‘Meteor’ peas outside in November, which made it through the winter without any protection. These are now producing well and are cropping well before the black bean aphids have had a chance to get at them!

Wildflower area

Another aspect of the garden that has benefitted from the early sunny weather are the wildflowers. We’re now in the third season in our wildflower area, which is absolutely blooming. In flower at the moment are buttercups, cow parsley, speedwell, red campion and aquilegia, and the forget me nots are just about hanging on. The teasel needs a bit of a thin as we seem to have done too well with that last season, and we have one giant burdock plant dominating a lot of space. We certainly won’t let that get to seed this year as many of us spent a fair amount of time trying to get the seeds off our clothes…

It’s really pleasing to see such colour in the wildflower area as the first year was a little bit of a disappointment.  After the volunteers worked really hard to clear, prepare and seed the soil, a sycamore tree fell right into the middle of their hard work. Its removal set the wildflowers back somewhat. Last year, we moved the bug hotel into the area – moving it as close to the food plants as possible seemed like a good idea – and put a handmade bench in so that visitors could sit and enjoy watching the bees at work, so it’s lovely to see things develop in there.

On a related note, one of the jobs that was forced on to us last summer was to remove all the geraniums from the orchard, as we found we had a disease which could have contaminated all the geraniums on site. Shortly after that, woolly aphids were discovered having a lovely time on our apple and pear trees. Given the space that was suddenly available, it was decided that we would introduce carefully chosen wildflowers to attract predatory insects such as ladybirds, lacewings and hoverflies so they could eat our insect problem for us. With support from the HDH Wills charitable trust [who funded a range of other environmental improvements around the site], we were able to buy in the right seeds to get the job done.

Early in spring, the volunteers worked extra hard to get the area suitably prepped and seeded, despite the dry conditions not being ideal for sowing, and we’re now seeing the results come through, so by July, visitors to the garden should have another lovely display to visit.

Bog garden in our woodlands

Another job we managed to complete just in time for a long dry spell was the planting of a new bog garden in our woodlands. We have been working to increase the diversity of flowering plants in the woods to hopefully encourage more insects, so creating a wetland environment meant we could have a broader range of plants. We were lucky enough to have a visit from Alan Titchmarsh’s Gardening Club, and the area was planted by volunteers under the direction of Errol Reuben Fernandes, head gardener of the Horniman Museum in London. Forget me not [I like forget me nots], black ferns, cardinal flower, water avens and a host of other lovely specimens have been put in, and we’ve since spent a lot of time carrying extra water down to see them through the dry spell. They are developing well and should be a lovely spot for years to come!