Category: Nature

May Orchard Walk

 

38 walkers turned up at the end of May on a fine day to do the Orchard Walk which we had arranged as part of the Vale of Glamorgan Walking Festival. The start coincided with the minute's silence held in memory of the Manchester terrorist victims so we were able to observe this in St Mary's church where we were made most welcome. The walk took in the Community Orchard, Elizabethan, Welsh and Wild Orchards but it is always good to talk about other village features such as the church, the ancient yew, the village green and the cattle pound. At least a dozen of the walkers were from Wenvoe but others had come from as far afield as Aberdare and Newport. As usual the Bee Hotel attracted a lot of interest but it was also good to find significant numbers of Early Purple Orchid and Common Twayblade in an area where they had not been recorded previously.

Green Flag judging took place the day before and we await the results with interest. The second bee hotel, shown in the photo, is now in place down at Goldsland Farm and the first occupants were moving in as the small units were being fixed in place. We have taken the opportunity to add some sparrow communal nest-boxes on the top shelf. Conservation work has concentrated on strimming, weeding and clearing. Two new gooseberries have been added to the heritage gooseberry collection at the Elizabethan Orchard and several new herbs (all donated) have been planted in the Physicians of Myddfai garden including Vervain, Betony and Valerian. This year looks promising for apples and plums and there should be plenty to share round if you fancy tasting some real old-fashioned apples fresh off the trees. Pears do not seem to have done so well.

We have been using the money raised by the Craft fair raffle to help out Wenvoe Primary School with plants, raised beds and compost. There are always jobs to be done so if you can spare an hour or two, do get in touch.

 

 

 

 

Pretty Little Flower or Menacing Alien?

 

A pretty little flower or menacing alien invader? This flower was in bloom during April and May and a number of people have commented on it. Commonly mistaken for a white Bluebell this is actually the Three Cornered Leek or Three Cornered Garlic. It grows all round the parish, often in private gardens but also alongside the A48 at the top of the Tumble and even on the Wenvoe Village Green. It may look innocuous but it is in fact a notifiable plant under the Countryside and Wildlife Act which means it is illegal to plant it or grow it in the wild. Soil containing seeds or bulbs (in other words any soil in which it has been growing) must be disposed of in a licensed landfill site. The reason is that it does spread rapidly and will soon smother our native wildflowers. It is already a major problem in Cornwall and Devon and one can expect the same to happen here.

It is very easy to identify and distinguish from a Bluebell as it has triangular stems – the latter is round. It also has an onion smell whereas the English Bluebell flower is scented (although the Spanish Bluebell has no scent). It is from the Mediterranean region and was introduced in the mid 18th Century

It is popular with foragers as the leaves and flowers can be added to salads and the bulbs used as a substitute for garlic but don't confuse it with a daffodil bulb which is poisonous. It is in the Allium family which are reportedly good for the heart and high blood pressure. The juice is even claimed to be good as a moth repellent.

 

Three Corner Garlic

 

 

 

May Garden Notes

I would like to start this month's column with a thank you all to who attended the W I table top sale and Spring Craft Fair in May. I loved hearing your thoughts and ideas on gardening and will pass on advice given to me through this column.

Much needed steady rain in the middle of May has really helped the gardens and allotments recover but, of course, also encouraged weeds to cover any bit of soil without a plant in it. There are lots of ways to discourage weeds; some use a mulch of bark chippings or gravel. Ella Webb, a dear family friend, uses both chippings and gravel but would recommend more plants to cover bare soil. It's very effective and looks so nice. This time of year there are some bargains to be had at garden centres. With a big turnover some plants get neglected and are sold off cheaply. A good soak in water overnight is needed then plant out. At this time of year they will catch up.

Hanging baskets are lovely to look at but they do need quite a bit of attention. You cannot be half-hearted when looking after these. They will need watering once, sometimes twice a day and feeding once a week at the very least and of course they will need regular deadheading to encourage new blooms. Older villagers may remember the Condick family. Kenny Condick had a passion for gardening and his garden, just off Caerau Lane, was a multiple competition winner. Hanging baskets were his forte. If you where lucky enough to obtain one from him you were told not to put it outside until June and he was not a person to be disobeyed.

If you think your lawn needs watering, the two main things to remember are a) that it takes a long time and b) if you're on a water meter it may be a little costly. Grass is a great survivor and will tolerate water shortage. Just sprinkling water on to a lawn for a short time will encourage roots to be near the surface where they will dry out quickly and weaken the grass. Unless you're really sure it needs watering, let it be.

Remove any leaves that have fallen from Roses (as they harbour disease) and don't compost them. I know I keep on about it but do not forget to treat for black spot.

Council chairman Colin Thomas has been asked, while at his allotment, about the best times for planting various vegetables. Colin says that he plants out when he knows he will be around to take care of them as, with many things in life, the first few weeks are the most trying. The National Open Garden Scheme (www.ngs.org.uk) has plenty of gardens to visit locally and this is a perfect way to get inspiration for your garden and raise money. Last year the scheme donated £2.7 million to charities

One of the best things about working around this village is seeing other people's gardens. I love learning more about plants from fellow gardeners and hearing how their plots have developed over time. Brian and Sandra Jones live in one of the Old Wenvoe estate houses on Walston Road, opposite the church and I was fortunate enough to be invited to take a look at their garden. Brian showed me around what is the best cottage garden I've seen for a very long time and also told me a bit of it's fascinating history.

Now is the time to plant Foxgloves,Canterbury Bells and Delphinium seeds if you want good, cheap plants next year. Grow them on in pots and plant out to final position in September.

Brian Foster, of Church Rise, is a wizard at growing Tomatoes and Cucumbers. He mixes his own potion,and will tell you the ingredients (with a bit of arm twisting) but not the proportions. He's always picking tomatoes before me – moan! If you have any tips for next month's article, stop me when you see me around the village.

 

Happy Gardening

Phil Morant Steps Down

 

As a result of the first heavy rain in weeks the team’s meeting on May 15 was cancelled. We’ll try again on June 12th.

The team will miss our founder/member Phil Morant who has decided to step down after years of faithful service. We are grateful for Phil’s dedication to making our village the pleasant environment in which we live. Thank you Phil from your team.

May Roundup

 

We were delighted to receive a donation from the raffle at the Wenvoe Spring Craft Fair. We hope to put this towards a project linked to Wenvoe Primary School. We have also received donations of plants and herbs from a variety of sources both within and outside the parish for which we are very grateful.

Some of our machinery rolled into action in May which involved topping up the water level of the pond in the Community Orchard and using our new wheeled strimmer to cut the grass at this location – this was the first time it had been cut and some of the grass tussocks proved to be quite formidable. Now that most of the trees are starting to get established we intend to keep the grass shorter to encourage wildflowers although we will leave a patch untended to benefit small mammals such as field voles and shrews.

Judging took place for the Green Flag awards and we hope to publish the results in the next issue. We are already the only village in Wales to have received awards for three locations and this year we are going for four. Work this month has involved constructing four new raised beds at the Community Orchard for vegetables and salad crops and we hope that youngsters will be able to help with the planting. Wildflower meadow seeds have been spread around the Wild Orchard, Elizabethan Orchard and Welsh Orchard.

Scope Sully brought a small team along to the watercress beds at Goldsland Farm and helped to clear brambles and nettles, to spread wildflower seeds in two new raised beds and to decide on a location for a hedgehog home. We hope that they will visit on a regular basis as it appeared to work well for both us and them.

There will have been many new residents coming into the village in recent months so if anyone reading this is interested in wildlife and would like to get involved do get in touch. There is always plenty to be done and roles go way beyond bracken-bashing and could involve planning and design, habitat creation, wildlife monitoring, planting and working with children. We now have seven sites – one for every day of the week!

The Physicians of Myddfai;

 

The Welsh Orchard near Maes y Felin includes a selection of plants grown by the Physicians of Myddfai; 12th century (and onwards) herbalists who were known all over Europe. We know a lot of what they believed and prescribed because, unusually for the time, their teachings were well-documented. The plants they used, with a few exceptions, will be familiar to us – many regarded as 'weeds'.

There is a very common little weed growing all round Wenvoe at the moment with blue flowers known as Ground Ivy and this was first recorded for medical use by the Myddfai practitioners. A fresh herb tea of the plant with honey is naturally rich in Vitamin C and it was found useful in dealing with coughs. The leaves could be turned into snuff which helped with asthma and also headaches and hangovers. The Celts treated moderate burns with an ointment using the stems and it was thought to relieve snake bites. The Celts also used it for many other conditions including indigestion, eye problems and ringing in the ears.

It was an important herb in magic and folklore but a very practical use was for dyeing fabrics, the fruit producing a dye that is grey and sage green, the leaves a creamy yellow colour and boiling a dark navy stain. And if this has still not whetted your appetite a common name for the plant was Ale hoof because it was used for flavouring beer before hops became the standard. It is still used occasionally by micro-breweries and is described as giving the beer a taste of 'slightly nettle with a minty edge'.

Whilst it is never advisable to attempt medical treatments using herbs without consulting an expert, it is interesting to note the current curiosity about some of the old remedies. An old German proverb states 'The garden is the poor man's apothecary'.

Fiery Rooster Challenge

 

If you are at a loose end during May and fancy some outdoors activity why not try the Fiery Rooster challenge? It is the Chinese Year of the Rooster and at each of the following five sites you will see a poster on the noticeboard with a question. To get the answer go to the next site. The five locations are The Upper Orchid Field, The Community Orchard, The Elizabethan Orchard, the watercress beds at Goldsland Farm and the Wild Orchard. You can start at any point but then need to follow them in order. First correct answer wins £20 of Garden Vouchers; second gets £10. Check Facebook to see if the prizes have been won. Take pencil and paper or some other means of recording the answers.

On Thursday 25th May we shall be leading an orchard walk as part of the Vale of Glamorgan Walking Festival. We start at 11am outside the church and the walk of around 5 miles will take in the Community Orchard, Elizabethan Orchard, Wild Orchard and Upper Orchid Field. No booking necessary but bring lunch and wear stout footwear. If you know your way around the area and 5 miles seems too much you can join us for a while and then make your own way home.

Pupils from Wenvoe Primary School helped us again this year to spread wildflower seed on the bed in Grange Park. They were impeccably behaved and found out, amongst other things, how bees are saving wild elephants in Africa. Elephants have an aversion to bees so by placing hives around the perimeter of the village the elephants are deterred from muscling in and consuming the crops, hence reducing conflict and the prospects of villagers taking retaliatory action.

This month the group has arranged for the erection of another noticeboard and bee hotel, this time at Goldsland Farm (featured on Radio 4's Farming Today). We have put up four new raised beds, 2 insect homes, 3 butterfly boxes, 3 nestboxes, 4 hedgehog homes and planted 3 Rowan, 3 Wild Cherry and 3 Crabapple along with the native Yellow Water Lily, Flag Iris, Flowering Rush and Purple Loosestrife.

As always there is masses to do around the sites so if you fancy doing a bit of conservation work, do get in touch.

Apples

 

If you visit the orchards in May you should still see plenty of blossom around, the majority of the trees being apples. But what is an apple and where does it come from? The first distinction is between the crab-apple and the sweet apple that we eat. The crab is our native apple and you can often find it growing in hedgerows around the parish. It usually has spines on the branches and the fruit is small, hard and very sour. But it has been used for thousands of years by our ancestors cooked and fermented. Crab-apple jelly is still popular to make at home or buy.

The sweet apple originally came from the Tien Shan Mountains in Kazakhstan thousands of miles away and it took many centuries to work its way along the silk routes to the Middle East and Europe. If you plant the pips from, say, a Cox’s Orange Pippin you will get a variety of different apple types, many of them of little use so to get another true Cox’s you have to graft them, a skill that was well known to the Romans. You may hear people referring to hybrids between a crab and a sweet apple but this does not happen and DNA analysis of the origins of the sweet apple has found that crabs were not involved in its evolution.

Because of this great variability you never quite know what might pop up and many new varieties were chance discoveries. Claygate Pearmain (which grows in our Community Orchard) was found in a hedgerow in Surrey but once discovered grafting ensured that that tasty variety is still available to us these days. In the heyday of apple development in Britain there were thousands of varieties. Farmers would spread the mush from cider production around the edges of their fields to see what new varieties might appear and if you look out of the window of the car or train you will see apple trees growing from the cores lobbed out of the windows by passengers – there are several on the link road past Pencoedtre. These are known as ‘wilding’ apples.

Commercial orchards have little value for wildlife as the trees are kept short, grubbed up after around 7 to 8 years and sprayed regularly through the season. In a traditional orchard the trees are allowed to grow to their full size and may live for 100 years or more. These are a haven for wildlife attracting many of the species that would have been common before our orchards were destroyed, including rare beetles such as the Golden Chafer and birds like the Wryneck. In 1900 there were about 15 orchards in Wenvoe but little evidence of these remain other than in the names of some houses and streets.

So enjoy your apples whether you plant a tree or two in your garden or visit one of our traditional orchards in the parish. There is increasing evidence that the older varieties may be better for you and being locally sourced you avoid the air miles involved in shipping your fruit from other continents to your supermarket. And wildlife will benefit.

 

RHS Flower Show

Having been to the RHS flower show in Bute Park, it made me realise just how good some of these exhibiters are. To be honest, a few of the show gardens would not have come up to the standard of some of the gardens in and around Wenvoe. I have asked a few residents for some tips, if only to share the blame if things don't work out as they should. Gerry Crump, of Rectory close, always staggers the sowing of flowers and veg to prolong the the season. Most years he's still picking runner beans in October. If you can make room for a wigwam of beans in your garden its well worth it. Gerry's garden is lovely, especially with the summer bedding in place.

Another lovely garden is Sylvia Davies's which is opposite the Walston Castle as you turn in to the Village. Sylvia's tips include labelling containers of mixed up plant feed and pesticides as mistakes are costly and the use of more perennial plants to cut down on the extra work of bedding plants. Sylvia also points out that with longer days the temptation to do more is always there but remember that the garden will still be there in the morning.

Adventurer Joyce Hoy's tip for saving your plants from slugs and snails is to put slug bait or traps on prepared ground a couple of days before planting out. I would love to hear any tips you can share. I'll be manning my table at the Wenvoe Spring Craft fair on 14th May and am around the village most days.

A lot of the perennials are really starting to grow now, the taller of which will need support, especially perennial poppies and peony. Day lilies are a good bet for a dry spot in the garden. They will need a bit of room as they will eventually form clumps. That early, yellow flowering shrub Forsythia will need pruning now if you want it to keep its shape and to flower next spring.

Roses, the favourite in a lot of gardens, take a bit of looking after. The mistake I used to make was to wait until I saw an aphid or a bit of black spot, go to the Garden Centre to get a remedy and then take action. Now I spray before there is any sign of pest or disease at all and it works for me.

I have just read that now is the perfect time to divide daffodils. Dig up the clumps and pull apart by hand, trying not to break off roots and leaves, and re-plant at the same depth.

Look after those tender young plants. The temptation to put them out may be great but they will need to be hardened off by putting them outside in the day and back under cover at night. When all risk of frost has passed, put them into beds and they will soon catch up. Sadly the Tulip tree, positioned at the front of the Community Centre, had to be taken down as it had outgrown its space. This should be a reminder to us all when considering the positioning of larger plants. It's not just about the damage they may cause to structures in the future but they can be expensive to remove. Wenvoe has lots of lovely large trees but in my experience they look a lot better in other people's gardens. If you're tempted by the lovely Acers in Garden Centres, they do suffer from wind damage so a sheltered spot is ideal.

Last thing, if we do have a dry spell don't skimp on the watering, especially near to the house where ground can be drier. Happy gardening

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