Regular visitors to the garden can expect to see a few changes when they next arrive. At this time of year, our volunteers would naturally be hard at work preparing for the Spring Celebration event on Saturday May 16th, but there have been a few projects to add into the mix.
Indoor growing space is always at a premium for us, and we are currently using every spare inch of our greenhouse, polytunnel and the Keder House [a sort of large square greenhouse covered in industrial strength bubblewrap]. A mixture of annual bedding plants, herbs and vegetables is all bulking up to be ready for sale at the event, but by the time visitors arrive, we should have a spanking new polytunnel in the veg area to show off.
A grant from the Finnis Scott fund enabled us to buy the structure, and support from BSN Group has ensured that it will be professionally built. This will give us the extra space we need to produce more plants for sales and place them around the gardens. It will be sited at the back of the veg plots, and clearing the space has involved the volunteers dismantling the pea frames and our small cuttings greenhouse (and then quickly rebuilding it elsewhere when we realised we needed the growing room! Entirely my fault…).
The move of the small greenhouse has worked really well, as we have been able to give it more height, and it has proved to be much more useful and flexible in its new home. It currently contains several hundred Nicotiana plants, which should be ready for sale in just a few weeks.
Elsewhere in the gardens, the wildflower beds that were sown in the orchard as part of last year’s Predators and Pollinators project are blooming lovely. Red valerian, Pink Campions and Forget-me-nots are all putting on an early show, and there is plenty more to come in future months. That’s not to say that there hasn’t had to be some hard work involved, as we have had to remove a few things we didn’t want. There were quite a few of the usual suspects – dock, nettles and blood-veined sorrel – which were quietly removed and replaced with wildflowers we have grown from seed, such as Poached Egg Plant, Nigella and Poppies. One thing we weren’t expecting to have to deal with was thinning out the Feverfew. It’s a lovely plant which covers itself in lots of daisy-like flowers in summer, but it can achieve quite a spread at full size. If we had left things as they were, they would have covered nearly all the beds, and there would have been no room for anything else! Fans of Feverfew will be glad to know that we saved as many as we could and have either planted them elsewhere or potted them up for sale.
Another thing to look out for in the gardens is Geraldine the scarecrow, who was built by a group of young people with additional support needs from a local SEN college. Geraldine watches over our veg plots and will be ready to welcome you when you come through the gate at our Spring Celebration event. We will look forward to seeing you then!