Category: Nature

Private Gardens In The UK

Nature Notes

Private Gardens In The UK

Private gardens in the UK cover an area bigger than all the Nature Reserves combined, estimated at over 10 million acres. Just as our countryside and woodland is shrinking, so is the amount of garden space which wildlife can use as more gardens become wholly or partially paved over or covered with decking, replaced with artificial grass or sheds and offices. This is the season for New Year resolutions so please take some time to think about how you and the family impact on your environment. Anyone can feed the birds or leave a little patch of lawn or flower-bed to go a bit wild. Will hedgehogs become an animal that our children only read about in books? In the last 20 years numbers have declined by 30% in urban areas and 50% in rural ones and this on top of massive declines in the 20th century. But there are several things you can do to help, such as by creating small gaps in your fence to allow them to move from garden to garden. Try planting pollinator-friendly plants, shrubs and trees – for more on this visit the Bee Loud Glade near the Goldsland Orchard. And what about a pond?

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They do not have to be large. The one in the picture cost 97p with a black bucket popped into a hole. It includes two plants, Purple Loosestrife and Marsh Marigold (Kingcups). In the summer it was full of Rat-tailed Maggots which may sound awful but are the larvae of the attractive Hoverfly, the Drone Fly. So, why not make a difference yourself.

 

 

Tips for December

The Village Gardener Tips for December

Victoria of the Walled Garden. Tips for December.

  1. Secure your climbers to walls and supports.
  2. Tie up conifers to stop them spreading in high winds or snow.
  3. Prune apple trees by cutting out crossed branches and thinning out the middle.
  4. Stay off the soil in wet conditions to avoid compaction.
  5. Keep watering to a minimum in the greenhouse, especially the pelargoniums.

 

Pete Ferris. Gardening on a wet day.

  1. Check on the wine you made in the autumn.
  2. Sample the wine
  3. Share your spoils with friends
  4. Realise you are not supposed to meet up, pity.
  5. Enjoy spoils and wine by oneself.

 

What a year it has been, with all that’s gone on in the world, the garden has been a refuge from bad news. People who work on the land, whether farmers or gardeners, always knew the benefits of working with plants and the soil. Joining local walkers or the Wildlife Group with all their activities, will get you closer to nature and improve wellbeing. If you want to join one of these groups, the numbers are in the front of this magazine. We are all looking forward to a better time in 2021 when hopefully groups can start to meet again. I will be looking forward to the Wenvoe Open Garden event and an Autumn show.

Even at this time of year the green house is quite full, with plants that need protecting against wind or frost. If you can, put the plants outside on a mild day and give it a thorough clean. This will help keep the plants free of disease.

There is one thing assured this year and that is the amount of cardboard that we will need to deal with coming up to Christmas. It can be used a lot around the garden in a variety of ways. The compost bin will benefit from cardboard as it adds carbon and will help when you have lots of grass clippings to break down. It is brilliant for putting on ground that you need to clear, as by the time it rots down the weeds will have died. Putting cardboard down where you need a path, then covering with bark also stops weeds.

At the start of November quite a few new people started work on their allotments. Under the watchful eye of councillor Colin, they were getting stuck into the tasks at hand. These days we must be careful of thieves who see the allotments as a chance to pilfer. So, take note from some of the other allotment holders and don’t leave any tools on site. There is one thing the new starters will never be short of and that’s advice from the other plot holders.

Thanks for all your comments throughout the year. None of us are ever too old to learn, unless you go by the name of Gordon Jones who can give sound advice on everything. Special thanks to Joyce Hoy for being able to name any plant I show her.

Take care and have a lovely Christmas and a great new year.

 

 

The Welsh Have No Use For Orchards!

The Welsh Have No Use For Orchards nor Gardens!

(The Welsh) have no use for orchards nor gardens’. So said Gerald of Wales, the 12th/13th century historian and archdeacon of Brecon.

We described in the previous two issues something of the background and history of the sweet apple – so did Wales really miss out? You will often come across old farmhouses called Ty’n y Berllan (the house in the orchard) and apples feature prominently in Welsh mythology. In the Mabinogi collection, Pwyll’s men are ordered to ‘wait outside the court in the orchard’. King Arthur’s Avalon derives from the Welsh ‘afallen’ or apple tree.

The Welsh king, Hywel Dda, set out in the 10th century the values of different assets and a sweet apple tree was worth 60 pennies, equivalent to 60 lambs or 15 pigs. There are many references in the Middle Ages to apple-growing whether in poetry, land-use records or folk traditions. There were 12 acres of orchards on the lands of Llanthony Priory and even this far back vines, pears and other Mediterranean fruit were grown. St Donats featured orchards which were ‘fair things to behold’. The Physicians of Myddfai (visit our Welsh orchard to find out more) praised the medicinal value of apples.

By the end of the 18th century the colourful Iolo Morganwg was compiling a list of 147 apple varieties then growing in Glamorgan and Gwent. From the large country houses to the small peasant cottages, apple trees could usually be found and all the way from Glamorgan to Anglesey. By 1899 there were 6,500 acres of orchard recorded of which 4,000 were in Monmouthshire. Love spoons were often carved in applewood and the old custom of wassailing was celebrated. Even David Lloyd George was praised for the quality of the apples he grew. Many varieties were of Welsh origin such as Cissy and St Cecilia. Others like Morgan Sweet were a favourite with the miners (which they enjoyed with Caerphilly cheese) as the juice, which was tangy yet sweet, was refreshing when working down the pits.

All of these can be sampled in our Wenvoe orchards with St Cecilia judged the top apple this year. Did Gerald of Wales get it right? What do you think? Much of the information here is taken from a little book called the Apples of Wales by Carwyn Graves, published in 2018 and a great read if you find the topic interesting.

 

And finally, just to get the little grey cells working, where are the ruins featured in the photo and what is the connection with this article? A clue for you – it is less than 10 miles from Wenvoe.

 

 

Must Do List for November

Betty James “must do” list for November

  1. Wash flower pots before storing them.
  2. Put fleece on everything that needs covering.
  3. Raise all containers and pots to avoid water logging.
  4. Dry begonia corms thoroughly before storing.
  5. Any weeding done now will cut down on established weeds in Spring.

Wenvoe over 90s ramblers club tips

  1. Put plants nearer the house so you can actually see them.
  2. Your relatives only take you out to garden centres, so learn to enjoy gardening.
  3. No water features as we only end up in them.
  4. Keep everything as flat as possible in the garden, we can’t afford a fall.
  5. Tell people what you want for Christmas, otherwise it’s socks and tea towels.

Leaf mould is one of gardening’s great composts, it’s so easy to make and improves soil structure. You can also use it for bringing on seedlings. The best use as far as I know is for growing bulbs. It doesn’t necessarily need a compost bin, just fill bin bags with leaves then damp down. put a few holes in the bags and place out of the way. A good way of looking after bare patches in the borders or allotments is to plant what’s known as green manure. This not only protects soil from erosion, it inhibits weed growth and can then be dug in come spring to add nutrients to the soil.

Even with shorter days and inclement weather there are still plenty of jobs to be done. On the rare dry days a bit of weeding is always needed. Bare root shrubs and trees are available to order. They are cheaper bought this way and have a very high success rate. Planted now, they will establish a good root system over the winter. Keep raking up the leaves, especially those on grass, otherwise the grass will take ages to recover. There is still time to plant some garlic cloves; they need a cold spell to form clusters.

Ash dieback is taking hold in the village with a number of trees already taken out. If any of your trees have lost their leaves prematurely then get them checked out. At present there is no way back for infected trees with this disease. The latest survey suggests that only 5% of ash trees have a resistance.

New rules on leaving the EU mean that imported plants from Europe will have stringent tests to deal with pests and disease. I would have thought that should have been in place already. The upshot of this is that garden centres say it will mean an increase at the checkout on already highly priced plants. As a country we have allowed some diseases to take a stronghold around the south of the country. It beggars belief that we cannot grow enough plants in this country. Surely, for the prices garden centres charge, we ought to be able to compete and most of all be safer from pest and disease. While we were in lockdown during the early spring, people found old packets of seed and, looking around our area, gardens flourished. Irene and Dave in Vennwood really showed what you can do with a packet of seeds.

Take care and happy gardening

 

 

Peregrine Falcon Recruited

Wildlife Group Activities

Our newest recruit is a Peregrine Falcon – plastic of course but don’t tell the crows! Benches and similar structures that we install in our sites can prove popular, not only with people, but also crows, rooks and starlings with all the associated deposits that come with them. Our Peregrine is intended to deter them. We shall see – but as crows are pretty intelligent it is possible that they will realise that although the Peregrine is the fastest bird, even fastest animal, on the planet, believed to achieve speeds of 200 mph when diving, ours is somewhat static, achieving just the odd wobble in high winds.

We had another good conservation day working on the Upper Orchid Field and re-opened a number of the paths which had become overgrown with brambles and Blackthorn. The challenge now is to keep the paths open so if you have occasion to walk there, consider taking a pair of secateurs and snipping away at the odd bit of undergrowth. Hopefully, the contractor will have been able to cut the field by the time you read this but access has proved a bit of a problem with the takeover of Cemex.

Waitrose have again come up with a donation to Wildlife Group funds, for which we are most grateful. Even before Covid, applying for grants was becoming harder as funding bodies increasingly favoured larger organisations and those living in deprived areas. For example the much-publicised Local Places for Nature capital grant starts at £10,000 and the Biffa landfill tax refund at £5,000. The Small Grants scheme is ‘currently closed to applicants’. Community Packages for Nature offered by the Welsh Government must be ‘located in areas of high physical environment deprivation with limited access to nature’.

We are doing particularly well for apples this year as our trees start to mature with the Welsh Orchard producing an abundance. An apple-tasting session found that Cissy came out top closely followed by Afal Wern. Equal third were Machen, St Cecilia and Pig Aderyn. Cissy dates back to the 18th century. It was raised by a Mr Tamplin from the Malpas area who called the apple after his sister. The Elizabethan Orchard has produced its first Walnuts and Figs. Work on the Bee Lod Glade is progressing with the planting of Escallonia, Eucryphia, Euonymous, Gipsywort, Evening Primrose and Purple Loosestrife. Planting containers have been constructed out of recycled timber. A 100+ tree hedgerow from the Woodland Trust is due for delivery during November.

 

 

September Improvements

Wildlife Group

September Improvements

Continuing with our theme of noticeboards we have erected another donated one, this time from the Community Council for which many thanks. The old noticeboard had been in storage but has been refurbished and installed at the Bee Loud Glade. We now have a total of 8 larger noticeboards, one small one and two information notices scattered throughout the parish. Plantings have included two Amelanchiers and a donated Bay at the Bee Loud Glade and during October we shall be adding Escallonia, Eucryphia and Euonymous – all particularly good for pollinators. Three Mahonias will follow towards the end of the month. Fruit, mainly apples but also a good crop of Medlars, are coming along nicely in the orchards. There is a lot of current interest in Quince (Cydonia) and whilst we have planted 4 they do take time to mature. Our oldest one (about 5 years) in the Community Orchard produced little fruit this year but seems healthy. This could be down to a lack of pollinators which is increasingly becoming a world-wide problem. Interestingly our most productive orchard is the one which has beehives.

Regular visitors to the Upper Orchid Field may have noticed that the meadow is shrinking! Just consider that the benches were all originally on the edge of the grass but several of them are now a few metres back as the brambles advance into the field. Ian Moody organised a start on the fight back with a mix of Environment Group and Wildlife Group members and several of the benches are now accessible again. We hope that the annual cut of the field will also involve further removal of bramble. If visitors to the field could take a pair of secateurs and snip the odd bramble, every little helps. We were also delighted to receive an offer of two teak benches in response to our appeal in the last What’s On and these will be installed down in the Bee Loud Glade.

Top Tips for October

THE VILLAGE GARDENER

Top Tips for October

Top horticultural show judge Mr Gwyn Williams’s tips for October.

  1. Ripen green tomatoes by cutting off along with the vine, place on cardboard and put on windowsill.
  2. Sow winter lettuce and meteor peas.
  3. Use the mower on a high setting to pick up the leaves off the lawn.
  4. Dig up dahlia tubers and store frost free.
  5. Be sure to mark the ground where perennials die right back as you may not remember where they are.

Actor, author, poet and politician Mr Noel Williams has some thoughts on gardening.

  1. Get most of the gardening done in the morning, then relax in the afternoon.
  2. You can never have enough green bags.
  3. Look as if you know what you’re doing.
  4. Raised beds will help you garden for longer.
  5. Use a walking stick on uneven ground, as three points of contact with terra firma are better than two.

Six months ago we struggled to get seeds and plants from online retailers and garden centres as they had not got a delivery mechanism in place. At present there are plenty of options to purchase plants. Come March who knows where we will be. Order seeds, summer bulbs and corms now as they are in stock. Quite a few gardeners used potatoes left over from grocery shopping, with some quite remarkable results. Most people will now hopefully save seed for next year. Wenvoe gardens have been great this year, with people sharing their spare plants. The term golfing gardens came about when golfers in Wenvoe turned to the soil and improved their gardens while the courses were closed. When the courses reopened some of them found their mowers wouldn’t start…..

October is, as usual, a busy time on the veg plot planning next year’s harvest. Broad beans as well as certain varieties of peas can be sown now. Salad mixes grown under cover will soon provide fresh produce. Cauliflower variety Snowball can be sown in cold frames now and will be ready to plant out in early spring.

Look after canna lilies by lifting, then drying and store in a cool dark place. Make sure you finish planting your spring flowering bulbs. If you’re planning to sow some wildflowers next year, clear a patch as a lot of these plants cannot compete with grass. Also do not add any nutrients, the poorer the soil the better they like it. Cowslips will grow in a lawn; you need to sow the seed now as they need a cold spell before they will germinate. Winter flowering pansies must be one of the best value plants. They will, with dead heading, flower from now until next May.

Trying to keep tender plants safe, by giving them shelter in the months ahead, can take up a lot of room. It is false economy to try and cram them in, they need space and should not be touching, otherwise infection will spread.

If by any chance you see a hedgehog in your garden, then look after it by feeding it with dog or cat food. You will not make it dependent on you as they will only use the food put out for them as a supplement. Provide shelter for them and you will have one of nature’s best garden pest predators

The library not working at full capacity has curtailed the gardening advice available from the staff. The horticulturists have been busy with their own plots. Joyce is redesigning her back garden. Heulwen has taken wildlife gardening to another level and Gordon is growing deadly plants – can’t say more

 

Take care and happy gardening.

 

 

Community Orchards Resurgence

NATURE NOTES

Community Orchards Resurgence

With 5 Community Orchards in the parish we are starting to reclaim some of the ground lost through the wholesale removal of orchards over the last hundred years. In this and future articles we shall consider the origin of orchards, the history of their rise and fall and why they are important for wildlife.

To begin at the beginning – the ‘sweet’ apple that we eat originated in the Tien Shan mountains of Kirghizia on the border between western China and the former Soviet Union. A Russian plant geneticist writing in the 1920s commented that it was like a Garden of Paradise with apple groves, mountain turkeys, porcupines and a host of other wildlife. Alma Ata, capital of Kazakhstan, means ‘Father of Apples’. Over time these apples travelled locally in the intestine of bears and other animals or were carried along the silk roads, eventually reaching Europe and Britain. A couple of thousand years BC the remains of apples have been found in Mesopotamia. The Persian word Pairadaeza was a walled garden enclosing fruit trees and canals and this translated to the Latin word Paradisus and our word Paradise.

Now, take an apple and plant a dozen or so pips from it and you will get 12 different apple trees of which 11 may be useless and just one palatable. Because apples from seeds do not grow true to the original, grafting is necessary where a bit of branch/twig from the original is attached to a rootstock. So if you find a particularly tasty apple you can produce more of those trees by grafting. The Romans understood the principles of grafting as specialist tools have been found in excavations. Pliny referred to over 20 varieties of apple in his Natural History and he was writing in the first century AD. Subsequently fruit growing was maintained by the monasteries but really took off in Tudor times with Henry Vlll’s fruiterer, Richard Harris, establishing what was England’s first large fruit collection. The 18th and 19th centuries was a high point in the development of apple varieties with thousands of varieties being grown, many of which have now been lost.

There have, of course, been apples in Britain for thousands of years but these were Crab Apples, small, sour and often sporting spines on the branches. There are many still growing in the hedgerows around Wenvoe. References to apples in old Celtic traditions and myths would have been about Crabs which were cooked or fermented. But most commentators suggest that Crab Apples had little or no impact on the origins of the sweet apple and that they do not generally hybridise.

The image in the painting shown may be a little idealised but it is one that it would be nice to replicate and we are getting there slowly. Next month we shall discuss the decline of orchards and apple-growing in Britain and why it is important to bring them back.

 

 

Your Jobs For September

THE VILLAGE GARDENER

Your Jobs For September

Environment team tips.

  1. Make sure your stored produce is mouse proof.
  2. Clean out the bird feeders.
  3. Leave the ivy if it’s not bothering you as the birds will love the berries over winter.
  4. Save seed, don’t get caught out next year.
  5. Clear the windowsills ready for pelargonium cuttings.

Pauline Harringtons tips

  1. Neat and tidy will make things easier for you.
  2. Try not to grow as many dandelions as last year
  3. Look after your nails, never go in the garden without gloves.
  4. Grow veg among your flowers to add interest.
  5. If you get fed up with a plant, just throw it out. You will feel better.

September is another busy month in the garden. With shorter days on the horizon, a bit of time management will be needed to complete all the jobs. Making a list is a proven way of getting things done. Start by sowing some sweet peas in a cold frame. Keep them cool so they don’t get leggy and only cover if there’s a chance of frost. These can then be planted out in the spring. Plant any perennials that you grew from seed earlier in the summer. With the soil still warm and moist the plants will soon establish and be ready for next year. Shrubs would also benefit from being planted now. Divide established perennials and use these to fill in any spaces around the garden.

This month is a good time to sow a new lawn or make good some bare patches. Like most jobs, working on the lawn is all about the preparation. Groundsmen always use new seed as germination decreases the older it is. Plus the birds will want their share. The autumn always produces a lot of garden waste which, with a bit of work, will make good compost. We will still have to purchase compost, unless you have a huge operation going on. It is so easy to pick up a couple of bags when you visit diy stores and garden centres. When you consider that the plants come in plastic along with the compost and some fertilizers it is not very eco friendly. Stores and gardeners want convenience, but what would be so hard in taking your own bag for compost and returning those plastic pots, as most stores will take returns. If we all returned plastic pots you can be sure they would find a better solution to plastic.

A must do job over the autumn / winter months is keeping the drains and soakaways clear of leaves and debris. The callout fee alone from a drain cleaning company should be enough for us to do this task regularly. Some fine wire mesh over the drain will make this task less of a chore.

One of the standout plants around the village is in Joyce’s front garden on Grange avenue. The plant is Dierama Pulcherrimum or Angel’s fishing rod. It is a majestic plant well worth a snoop. Growing this plant from seed can take years but they really are worth waiting for.

There has been a change at the Walled garden where Victoria has taken up the position of gardener in residence. Victoria will have exacting standards to uphold at one of the best kept secluded gardens in the vale. Mr & Mrs Crump and Mr & Mrs Williams of Rectory close have again excelled this year. With a scarcity of materials they have produced two great gardens again. Hats off to Angela, Janet and Mr & Mrs French of Larchwood, who have shown what a love of gardening can produce. Of course, I can’t mention Larchwood without referring to Ray Darlington’s lovely garden and a lawn you could play snooker on – but he wouldn’t let you.

Take care and happy gardening.

 

 

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