April 17, 2023

At last we’ve had some sunshine, and what a difference it’s made – suddenly we have colour in all the beds, and everything’s started growing again. Here’s one of the beds near the car park:

We’re beginning to untangle the various tangles of self-sown plants – unfortunately, most of them contain the only poppies we’re likely to have this year, so we’re trying to keep most of those, while removing all grass clumps, and some of the other plants. And at the start of the year, we sometimes wait until annuals like red deadnettle have finished flowering before pulling them out, so there’s plenty of nectar and pollen for the many early bees around the gardens.

Mostly though, we’ve been getting on with the behind-the-scenes work, like sowing more annuals to fill gaps, turning the compost bins, and getting the last bags of leaves into the leaf mould bin. And yesterday, a couple of the team went over to Cotefield Drive to help weed out nettles on the banks of the brook, to stop them suppressing the many wild flowers that have been planted there over the last few years. The cooperation helps both teams – when we came back, we brought six bags of young nettles, full of nitrogen to give our compost a boost as we remake it, and speed it up; we’re hoping to mulch more before any summer heatwaves, to keep moisture in the ground and reduce the amount of water we have to use.