A Visit To.......The Living Rainforest

I woke up on Sunday with an urge for a botanical type visit to somewhere new, so we did a bit of Googling and decided to pootle off to The Living Rainforest, just off the M4 near Newbury.
I am super interested at the moment in the way people are embracing houseplants and keen to remind folk that houseplants are garden and forest plants in other climes and I am trying to work out how we link the two things so that indoor gardeners realise that they are a part of the gardening community, even if they are just getting planty indoors. Anyway that's for another day!!

The Living Rainforest is on the site of what was Wyld Court Orchids in Hampstead Norreys in Berkshire, and is run by the Trust for Sustainable Living. The greenhouses now house three separate rainforest zones, with appropriate planting, and some wildlife, from each in the separate zones. Sadly when we were there the sloth was hiding, but we did see his back. What amazed me the most is that the centre supports 23,000 school children per year to learn about the rainforest and it's importance for the planet, which for me makes it a space I will always want to support. If we are to change the way we perceive the world we have to turn children and young people into passionate environmentalists who will use future votes to make sure we protect what effectively protects us.

I am not going to bore you with lots of words here because the photos really do speak for themselves, but what I will say is that this is a great place to visit with or without children, and if you are at all interested in what we today see as houseplants in their natural environments or just with each other as they would be in rainforests across the world, this is a great place to visit. Plus, go once, and you have a ticket for a year!!

AND THERE IS A SLOTH!!

Jade Vine (Strongyloden macrobotrys) from the Philippines.

Monstera deliciosa and water lettuce in one of the ponds. 

Anthurium veitchii. The leaf was as tall as me!

Madagascan Periwinkle (Catharanthus roseus)

More ponds and more Monstera!

For further info and visiting details go to the website at https://www.livingrainforest.org

A Trip to Yeo Valley.

Yeo Valley Organic Garden is one of very few gardens with Soil Association organic certification, and is just down the road from us in Bristol so on a warm, sunny May Sunday when it was open for the National Gardens Scheme, we decided it was too good an opportunity to miss and off we went.
Now it has to be said I know this garden relatively well having visited on a few occasions and am always knocked sideways by how well it is kept considering it relies solely on people power. In fact I posted a photo on Instagram of the veg garden and one person almost refused to believe it could be so tidy in an organic system. It is, of course, down to a truly committed team of highly skilled, professional gardeners and their tireless work and it's also proof that you can garden completely organically and still have a stunning garden.
It was amazing to see the garden so busy, with car loads of folk arriving to see the garden, particularly as it was a day that was benefiting the National Gardens Scheme. The garden is also open throughout the season so it's worth looking at the Yeo Valley website and seeing when and popping along
So here is a walk through the visit with photos.

Those yellow signs never fail to make my heart sing!!

The stunning vegetable garden with views of the rolling Somerset hills.

The herbaceous borders that lead from the veg patch to the meadows. Alight with the freshness of lime green Euphorbia, tulips and fresh spring growth. The darkness of the Pittosporum Tom Thumb really makes these colours zing.

The meadow, full of stunning flowering Camassia. 

The Crab Apple walk which was alive with bees, who's hives are in the adjoining field, full of flower and the promise of the harvest to come. 

The main garden is full of colour, again all with a nod to pollination but also in a very designed, modern herbaceous border way, that really lends itself to the landscape behind it. The large pond, just out of shot, echoes Chew Valley Lake which is the other side if the wall.

Purples and pinks abound in Spring,making the freshness of the spring foliage particularly bright and zingy.

Wisteria features heavily in this part of the garden, covering walls, fences and pergolas and again supporting the bees that live so close.

I love a good piece of garden sculpture and this, I think, is lovely. It sits at the end of a new piece of garden where you can sit and look out at Chew Valley Lake.

Mint and other herbs sit on the patio outside the cafe, in containers of all types. As the Yeo Valley dairy is next door, there is an emphasis on using the recycled containers used in milk production.

The promise of the year ahead....

Tulips in pots adorn the outside area of the most spectacular greenhouse!

The greenhouse. Closed on really busy days but I have been allowed into these hallowed halls and what an amazing space, full of non hardy tropical type plants that come outside in the summer.

Robbing the Flower Fields.....

Flowers. No matter who you are it's impossible to be unresponsive to the beauty of a flower, and to be able to combine flowers and food is an extraordinary phenomenon that can lead to a really emotional connection with what it is being eaten. Part of my and Incredible Edible Bristol's remit, if you like, is creating both beautiful and productive spaces across the city of Bristol, and use of edible flowers is vital to meeting that. So imagine my delight when I was asked, with Incredible Edible Bristol, to put together two small raised beds in the new Grow Zone at RHS Malvern; one that speaks of the city centre Urban Food Trail and one that supports the more beautiful side of what we do, in showing beautiful blooms that we use, either as edible flowers or to attract pollinators, and all of which are British grown.

So fast forward a few weeks and I had a chat with Jan Billington of Maddocks Farm Organics who grows the most stunning array of edible flowers, some which are instantly recognisable as such but some which are a surprise, such as Wisteria which tastes like peas, who said she was more than happy for me to pop along and raid her flower fields. Well that is not an every day offer now is it folks, so yesterday, with our amazing volunteer coordinator Hannah, off we doodled to have a look.
Now I am a long time fan of Jan. Anyone who creates an organic flower farm on overgrown Devon fields, and grows not just a huge range of edible flowers but also looks after the land and the soil to high organic principles, is inevitably going to be a hero. And oh my.......when I say the farm is beautiful what I mean is the farm is heart rendingly beautiful. Not only are all the plants stunning, healthy and pest free, but the farm is buzzing with life. We saw three different species if bees in one polytunnel alone. Swallows were swooping and buzzards flying. A gigantic bug hotel sits by a pond teaming with life. Swathes of plants are there for pollinators alone. And of course by supporting those pollinators, Jan is supporting the blossoming and blooming of the flowers that make her business sustainable both for people and planet.

Often we see edible flowers as a by product. We might grow Tagetes for example as companion planting and then pick a few flowers to zing up a salad. We might grow Borage for the bees and then fling a few flowers into a salad or a gin and tonic. We all grow violas as part of bedding or hanging basket schemes. Our Wisterias are dripping in glorious flower. But instead of looking at these flowers as incidental perhaps we should begin to look at them as a great way of bringing beauty into the vegetable garden and treating them as a really important part of our salad offering. A salad with mustards, sweet cicely and chervil leaves and flowers, borage flowers, calendula petals, violas and primroses, wild rocket with its flowers attached and bells blooms, is far more exciting than a sad bit of iceberg, and tastes amazing, with different bursts of flavour appearing with each mouthful. Plus of course the more flowers we grow, the more pollinators we attract.

So perhaps let's take inspiration from Jan and l add beauty to our veg patches with more flowers that we grow to eat whilst marvelling at Jan at Maddocks Farm and the many ways we see people farming beautiful British flowers.

Alliums just beginning to open ready for use.

Beautiful calendulas flooring their socks off in the polytunnels and making a grey day bright.

White borage, sweet and full of nectar as well as being covered with bees, which annoyingly weren't in the mood for posing!

Jan grows an amazing array of tulips, and the petals are used to adorn wedding cakes amongst other things.

Two to three inches of local, organic manure is spread on the beds each year, feeding the flora and fauna in the soil that are vital for good organic growth.

The Autumn Is Here

I'm really not joking but I'm trying not to panic!!

The seed heads of my alliums have finally fallen over. The sunflowers are dropping their heads. The calendula are still flowering but the seed heads are turning black. The dahlias have  gone black in the last frost. The perennial kale looks sad where it hasn't recovered from caterpillar attack and the mints are looking sad  and a bit cross.

 

The leaves are falling from the trees and shrubs that surround the garden, and each day the little Ginkgos leaves turn a bit more buttery in colour. The Acers, both in a bit of a sulk being in a garden that in all honesty is a bit too windy for them, have lost their leaves and the dieback is showing a bit. 

But am I rushing out to tidy it up? Am I panicking about the weeds that are still coming or the grass needing a last cut and it being too wet? What am I doing about the leaves falling everywhere? 

 

Well the answer is, I'm not really doing anything. There is no rush, no panic. It's my garden and at this time of year I'm losing interest in what I want from the garden and concentrating on what the wildlife need to get them through the winter.

Of course I'm still doing things. Sweet peas are sown, plugs bought are potted and being cared for in the greenhouse, several pots are full of primulas and some new bulbs have been planted. We've potted self propagated runners from the Japanese Wineberry, the strawberries have had their runners potted on and all the pots are weeded and top dressed with compost.

The leaves falling on the patio and paths are being collected for leaf mould and soon the compost will be emptied and spread on the beds keeping them full of the rich flora and fauna needed for the best growth next year. 

But most of all I'm enjoying the return of the birds to the feeders, the dewy cobwebs across the shrubs each morning and the feeling of life continuing in the garden despite the cold and damp and dark. I'm enjoying knowing the garden is beginning to take on a life of its own, where nature is the predominant force and Mother Nature is in charge.

 

Just probably need to point out that none of these pics are of my garden, but are photos taken around Bristol during the autumn!!

The importance of water

When my parents moved into their rural idyll in Lincolnshire one of the first things they decided to do, before they even knew if the house was going to remain standing, was dig an enormous pond. Well, I say they dug it but in reality we went up there to dig it while they looked after my daughter! They were determined to have running water around the garden and the pond was to be the beginning and the end of a stream that linked all the different areas of the garden. Eventually it became apparent that on their Lincolnshire clay it would take more than spades to dig this pond, and mechanised equipment was hired to finish the job, and almost as soon as the liner was in and the pond was filled the change in the gardens biodiversity was there to be seen. Whereas there was always plenty of birdsong, suddenly there were pond skaters, water boatmen and dragonflies, frogs and toads and it felt like the garden was buzzing and tweeting and properly alive. At one point that summer we sat on the patio watching hundreds of baby toads crossing the garden, like an amphibious swarm, heading to who knows where to do who knows what. It was an extraordinary sight.

 

But that pond taught me a vital lesson and that is that water in a garden is important for far more than looks alone. Whilst water is beautiful, and adds another dimension to any design, it's real power is that it brings in nature. 

Now we all know gardening is about controlling and manipulating nature but I've been thinking about this pond a lot recently, and here's why; it turned a garden, a manipulated and designed space, back to a far more natural place. It gave the herbaceous borders and rose garden a feeling of being part of something outside of the space and linked it with the landscape. It softened formal edges and the hard landscaping of seating areas and pergolas. It gave sound to the space, with the trickling of water as it moved around the garden. It felt like a door had opened and let nature back in.

Next year it will be 15 years since we dug that pond and that garden is gone to me, handed on to others. But I want to do the same both in my garden and in my allotment. Increasing biodiversity in that garden made mum a great gardener because she allowed nature in to fight the pests and diseases for her. Along with making compost and adding muck, which funnily was often down to me to barrow about as grandparent duties called, as soon as there was an issue, nature solved it. The house was always full of ladybirds in the winter, hiding in nooks and crannies and ready to rush outside as soon as the blackfly appeared on the roses, and those toads swallowed any slugs before they had a chance of getting to the prize winning delphiniums! And there were hedgehogs that snuffled about in the dusk, eating slugs as they went and leaving the snails for the thrushes to eat for breakfast.

And so my plan is for the tiny pond on my allotment, at the moment choked with duckweed, to be the centre of my allotment flower garden next year. I hope if I clear it out and plant some aquatics in it, that it will bring in the magic that I remember and go some way to reliving the magic of that garden in Lincolnshire. 

 

Helping the hedgehogs..........and other important stuff

This week, following a conversation at a meeting with Avon Wildlife Trust's new Chief Exec, Ian Barrett, about hedgehogs and slug pellets, and then a tweet from Ian linking a piece about toads being two thirds lost in the last 30 years, I began to really think about what seem to be really obvious links between loss of species that eat slugs and metaldehyde slug pellets. Now there's been lots of work done in this and I'm no scientist, so I'll post some links below, but my thoughts turned to why we use them.

I know lots of people work very hard to ensure they use only the organic pellets, but from the beginning of the season the garden centres and gardening sections of all the big superstores are full of metaldehyde type pellets. Usually these are next to advertising boards with huge photos of molluscs on, as if by mid March we need reminding of the blighters faces! For many years gardeners picked them up without thinking about the results on the local wildlife. Indeed that thought was never had. 

 

Hedgehogs, thrushes and toads were aplenty and our gardens were tidy places, places where nature was controlled. 

But today in 2016 there are some chilling stats.

We've lost 97% of our hedgehogs.

Thrush species are rapidly declining.

We've lost two thirds of our toads.

We've lost 90% of our wildflower meadows.

These stats aren't new. We know all this and so I wondered why we continue to use chemicals in our gardens that we all know are harmful to nature? 

I wondered what made us think it was ok?

But then I also realised that there's some really confusing advice out there, which leaves most of us scratching our heads and pondering.

So here are some thoughts......

Coffee grounds, whilst some feel they work, are not allowed to officially be used for slug prevention. So says the EU and that's why it's often hard to access them as giving away anything that's waste is complex. But equally they're great for soil conditioner and if that means a pile of it ends up round your prize Delphiniums, then I salute you!!

Beer traps whilst great mean the slugs are traipsing across your garden towards the yeast and will graze on the way, meaning they could munch your lettuces on the way to the pub!!

But beer traps can be a good part of a multi pronged attack.

Good, thick copper tapes do work but if you buy the thinner stuff, they're not overly bothered if they really want your prize dahlias. So unless you've got a fortune to spend, I wouldn't bother.

The organic pellets do work and as I write are deemed harmless to any creature who might eat said slug. But there is aquestion as to whether putting something that they like onto your garden, may just attract more molluscs in as they find them delicious. And who's to say they won't snack on your border before they eat the pellets? 

Nematodes do work but are an expensive option that will need applying regularly to ensure they work. Your neighbours of course won't have used nematodes so as their population becomes larger yours may end up increasing regardless of nematode use.

So what on earth do we do I hear you screaming. Well there are lots of options so don't despair. 

 

Dawn and dusk slug patrols are really necessary. I pick them off and put them into a bucket of salty water which despatches them. It's possible to pick a good many off both plants and paths at these times, and it definitely helps against the onslaught. I also go out straight after rainfall and pick them off. It's said that leaving a dead slug on a path will scare others away, but I'm definitely yet to be convinced of that!

But, that said, there are some really simple things that will save your seedlings without any outside help.  Pot them up from modules into 3" pots and grow them on. Once they fill these pots they'll be large enough to cope with most small infestations as long as you carry on with the dawn/dusk raids. Obviously this isn't useful for your beautiful herbaceous displays in the border as they appear in spring, but it's how to keep your new plants safe.

In the border there are ways of keeping them off. Egg shells, bran and coffee all work as long as you keep reapplying. There is product made of old bathroom suites crushed up that works an absolute treat sand rarely needs replacing, but equally broken and crushed bricks will work too.

But most importantly your garden needs its own biodiverse system. The smallest pond, some bird feeders, even if it's just a window feeder, a wildlife area that's a bit lost and untidy where beasts can hide, and feel safe. A hole in your neighbours fences for hedgehogs to wander through. Bug hotels, piles of rotting wood and even the dead heads of some plants are all important to encourage nature into your garden. And most importantly an understanding that if we over control, we actually kill off. That gardens need to support nature, rather than control it. 

A wise man, part owner of Common Farm Flowers, Fabrizzio Bocchia, was once heard to say 'look after the invertebrates, and you'll bring in everyone you need,' or something similar! So plant for insects, for pollinators and everything else, with perhaps a bit of persuasion, will come. 

It can be done but it's important to remember that you won't always win. And that doesn't matter because in the long term we will win if we stop controlling and start allowing. 

Now why this now? Well it's the perfect time to get organised!! Put up feeders, bird boxes, bug hotels now and by spring the birds will be in them. Make a wood pile now and you'll soon find frogs and toads nestling in with the autumn leaves ready to hibernate. You could even get a hedgehog box-I've never had one that was empty for long!! Start to plan your biodiverse garden over winter and by spring you'll see the difference. This is particularly important in cities of course. Recently we added a garden to a sunken roundabout in Bristol city centre and just planting lavender bought the bees rushing in to a space that had no wildlife in it at all. There's truth in the phrase, 'make it and they will come'!

And if you get to the point of feeling you must use pellets, please make sure they're organic the organic variety. 

Some people will of course ask why we should do this and what's so important about it really.

Well I'd like to think my grandchildren will be able to meet a toad or a hedgehog, and not rely on Mrs Tiggywinkle or Toad ofToad Hall to describe them to them. Don't you?!? 

 

http://www.hedgehogstreet.org/pages/slug-pellets.html

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2013/jul/10/slug-pesticides-metaldehyde-drinking-water

http://www.pan-uk.org/pestnews/Actives/Metaldeh.htm