Tue 9 June 2015 Cricket:  – 1^st Royal London ODI v New Zealand

Cricket is taking place at Edgbaston Cricket Ground, close to Martineau Gardens on Tuesday 9  June2015. You can park your car in the Martineau Gardens car park (subject to availability) for £10, we have space for 24 cars.

Thank you for choosing to park here.

• Your fee is helping to support a great cause and local charity.
• Martineau Gardens is a registered charity and community garden. We run education and therapeutic horticulture projects in the Gardens. The Gardens are here for the people of Birmingham to enjoy peace and tranquillity.
• To find out more about what happens here, visit this page

Your car is parked at your own risk. The gates will be locked or staffed, and staff will be on site throughout the match. If you wish to collect your car, before the end of the match, please phone 0121 440 7430 when you are outside the Gardens and we’ll unlock the gates.

At the end of play, the gates will be open for half an hour. Our staff will need to go home, so if you arrive later than this, you risk your car being locked in until 9.30am tomorrow morning, or an additional £15 charge.

Enjoy the cricket!

 Visitors to the Gardens

If you’re planning to visit Martineau Gardens on Saturday (we’re closed to the public on Sunday), the car park will be full – we’d love you to come and visit but please leave the car at home, (or arrange to be dropped off) and use public transport. Martineau Gardens is well served by buses. The nearest bus routes are  1, 45, 47, 61, 63, X64. To plan your journey by public transport, visit  www.traveline.info  and use the postcode search – Martineau Gardens postcode is B5 7UG. Alternatively, arrive by bike and bring your bike down to our bike rack, close to the Pavilion.

When you arrive, the gates will be loecked, please phone the office on 0121 440 7430 and we will unlock the gates for you.

If you’re looking for somewhere to bring children during the school half-term holiday this May, then remember to add Martineau Gardens to your list!

Open every day (except Sunday and bank holiday Monday 25 May), from 10am until 4pm, the Gardens are free to enter and offer a warm welcome to all. Martineau Gardens is  a place where children can place and get close to nature. If you’ve not visited before, there’s plenty to discover in our organically maintained community garden. Just two and a half acres in size, you can see an orchard, herb beds, vegetable plot, children’s ‘shipwreck’ play area, a formal garden, woodland, ponds, bee hives and a bird hide. We can lend you binoculars and there are wildlife guides on the bookshelves of the visitor room and bird identification charts in the bird hide.

We don’t have a cafe, but our meet and greet volunteers can make you hot and cold drinks (all our drinks are organic) and donations are welcomed. You’re welcome to bring your own picnic and borrow one of our picnic rugs or sit at a picnic bench scattered around the Gardens.

Whilst you’re here, you can see what salads and vegetables are in season; children love to see food growing and if you see something you’d like to buy, then one of volunteers will harvest it for you, or you can pick it yourself – just check with a volunteer first. (www.martineau-gardens.org.uk/visitor-information/plants-produce)

Our next event is the Martineau Gardens’ Storytelling Festival (Saturday 20 June), with the Traditional Arts Team – to find out about our future events, including outdoor theatre, follow this link: www.martineau-gardens.org.uk/events

To plan your visit to Martineau Gardens, follow this link: www.martineau-gardens.org.uk/visitor-information

 Wood chippings for use on paths, subject to availability!

The chippings are donated by tree surgeons,  Martineau Gardens sells the chippings bagged up at £2 a sack (using a recycled 50 litre compost bag) with all proceeds from sales going towards the running of the community garden. If we don’t have any bagged up when you visit, you’re able to buy a sackful for £1, provided you’re ready to roll up your sleeves and grab a shovel to fill your own sack! Please come into the office on arrival if you wish to buy a D.I.Y bag.

If you’re making a special journey to buy chippings, please telephone ahead to check availability – our chippings are popular.

We’re looking forward to our next event here at Martineau Gardens, the Spring Event. To find out more about the event, please click through the event page here: https://www.martineau-gardens.org.uk/events/spring-event/

Wildlife Report  Monday 27 April 2015

Our wildlife recorder Brian Perry walks around the gardens, usually every Monday, observing wildlife happenings. Here is today’s report, just in:

Spring flowers: in the woodland (and elsewhere), the Bluebells are out; shade growing hedge garlic (look for the white flower and the garlic-scented leaves), a patch of dog violets and the yellow petalled celandine. More unusual species include the marsh marigold (by the pond), resembling  a giant bright yellow buttercup. Purple toothwort can be seen growing by the twisted hazel (near to the sundial lawn) and under the hazel by the Pavilion, there is a white wood anemone (the only place we have spotted this).

Birds: some summer visitors have started to arrive including blackcap and chiff chaff (they are both warblers).

Insects: a speckled wood butterfly was spotted, surprising because it is a little cool today (it is brown with cream spots).

We’re sorry to announce but tomorrow’s winter working conservation party has been postponed, the next planned session is Saturday 14 March. If you’d like to know more about what happens at these outdoor sessions, read a report here:

Galaxy Hot Chocolate Fund – Vote for Martineau Gardens by Sunday

Every week, the Galaxy Hot Chocolate fund will donate five cash awards to local community groups and charities across the UK and Ireland. At the end of each week, the People’s Choice entry will win £300.

http://www.galaxyhotchocolate.com/galaxyfund2014/profiles/martineau-gardens

Please would you follow  this link to our page on the Galaxy Website – vote on the website (click the brown button VOTE) and if you use facebook or twitter, please do share the message there too.

Birmingham Running Events 2015

If you’d like to run for Martineau Gardens, let us know when you’ve booked your place and we can provide all the support needed to make your fundraising a success. We can send you sponsor forms; help you setup a Local Giving page so you can ask for donations online; promote your fundraising and order you a branded running top. Call 0121 440 7430 or email info@martineau-gardens.org.uk.

For some inspiration, take a look at our Trustee, Peter Arnold’s success in the Great Birmingham Half Marathon https://www.martineau-gardens.org.uk/2014/10/peter-runs-again-2014/ Peter’s completed the run four  years in a row and raised thousands of pounds to support our work with vulnerable adults from across the city.

Bupa Great Birmingham 10k

• Sunday 3 May 2015
• Across Birmingham City Centre
• Enter online at www.greatrun.org/great-birmingham-10k
• £25 entry

City of Birmingham Triathlon

• Sunday 19 July
• Sutton Park
• Range of distances and ticket prices from £56.50-£76.50 – see website for full details www.uktriathlon.co.uk/tristore/311-city-of-birmingham-triathlon-19th-july-2015

The Color Run, Birmingham 5k

• Saturday 15 August
• Birmingham City Centre, starting at NEC
• Registration has started via: www.thecolorrun.co.uk/birmingham (places fill up quickly!)

City of Birmingham 10k and 5k Fun Run

• Sunday 6 September 2015
• Sutton Park
• £17 entry for 10k distance, £14 for 5k.
• Enter online at www.uktriathlon.co.uk/events/city-birmingham-10k-5k-fun-run

Big Fun Run, Birmingham 5k

• Saturday 12 September
• Cannon Hill Park
• £20 entry on the day, early bird tickets available at £11.49. Enter online at http://www.bigfunrun.com/birmingham

Bupa Great Birmingham Half Marathon

• Sunday 18 October 2015
• Across Birmingham City Centre
• £35 entry
• Enter online at www.greatrun.org/great-birmingham-10k

It’s artichoke season! We’ve dug up our first few and its a  good crop. There are three unrelated artichoke plants, Jerusalem, Chinese and Globe Artichoke, the one that we grow here at Martineau Gardens is the Jerusalem artichoke. Related to the sunflower family, it grows tall stems, over 4 foot in height. The part that is edible, the knobbly brown tubers, are hidden below the surface of the vegetable beds. It’s not until harvest time (usually December) that we find out how well our artichokes have done.

Call into the Gardens to buy a handful of artichokes*. If you’re wondering what to do with them, we recommend turning  them into soup or roasting them. Jamie Oliver has a tasty looking recipe here:

http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/vegetables-recipes/saut-ed-jerusalem-artichokes-with-garlic-and-bay-leaves

*if you’re making a special journey, call ahead to check supplies!

Sieving leaf mould to create soil improver

Raking through the leaf mould

Ever wondered what the Garden Volunteers at Martineau Gardens do once the wintery weather sets in? There’s always plenty to do to keep the Gardens looking beautiful, even if the weather is becoming more challenging. Our Garden volunteers continue to come in over the winter. Pictured here are the Tuesday team in action, working hard with leaf mould. This sack of decaying leaves is nearly a couple of years old. Located close to the entrance of the woodland, leaves are added to the sack during  the  Autumn months.  The resulting leaf mould gets sieved to produce a rich, crumbly soil conditioner. Stewart and the Team bag this up throughout the year to be used around the garden as a soil improver.

Leaf mould is a really useful material to add to your homemade compost to improve it’s properties as a potting compost. If you’d like to know how to make your own leaf mould compost, the RHS have a useful article here.

Here’s a  lovely article written by Stewart Holmes and Jean Fletcher, which was published with Autumnal pictures of the Gardens, last month in GEM Magazine.

Martineau Gardens – Garden Tips GEM Magazine 2014