Garden Blog

It’s warm in the garden with intermittent sunshine. The overriding topic is water. There’s been little rain in May, and April was a dry month too. Over the spring months the pond has dropped four inches. All the barrels at the back of the centre staging are empty. The metre cube is about a third full. We have two fullish …

It’s warm and sunny today, and everybody comes to the Garden. Or it seems that way. We have 30 nursery children from Woodgrange with 10 adults, and 10 children with adults from Durning Hall too. That’s apart from after school children, and mothers with babies and toddlers, and a few dad’s too. Irises are in bloom in the pond. And …

It’s warm and sunny today, with a mostly blue sky. Volunteers and visitors are in a good mood in the spring sunshine. The garden is busy, there are parents with toddlers, some with pushchairs, and volunteers who have been to the Methodist Church on Woodgrange. The community centre is due for demolition and we have been given permission to take …

A rainy day, on and off. More on than off. Few visitors. Between showers, I look around the garden. There are lots of birds going to our feeders. I see a blue tit coming out of the bird box by the sycamore and almost at once another going in. They are probably incubating eggs. In the raised bed, near the …

It’s chilly with a sharp wind, the sky grubby white as if rubbed with charcoal. Earlier in the day there was sunshine but it’s gone for the day. Not a day when we’ll get many visitors. There’s a patch of vetch near the greenhouse. And quite a bit more of it in the wild flower bed. Not flowering yet. But …

It’s 15ºC and overcast. Pleasant when the sun is out and a little chilly when it’s in the clouds. Fairly quiet today. One group of nursery children from Maryland Children’s Centre haven’t come, although we had about eight children from Durning Hall, who haven’t been here before. The adults with them said they had enjoyed the visit will come again. …

A sunny day in the garden, about 20 degrees. It’s quiet today, few people realise we are open Thursday afternoons. We’ll likely pick up when the schools go back after Easter. The large flowering cherry is at peak blossom, pink petals are starting to fall. It is such a fragile blossom, a little breeze and the path is covered like …

The sun is shining, but it’s just 12ºC. It feels, though, so much warmer. That must be the effect of the wooden fence round garden, sheltering us. This is the first Thursday opening of the year, the beginning of our summer timetable. There’s flowers and blossom everywhere. There are overhangs of white spiraea florets in a raised bed near the …

It is a cold morning, 2 degrees C, though the sun is out, but there is not a lot of heat in its glow. The pond is frozen over and almost full to the brim. The surface vegetation is mostly shrivelled. I see a few snails, hibernating. And no other animal life in the pond. It’s dormant, awaiting spring warmth. …

I visit the garden on the first day of the new year, not expecting much. It’s chilly, the wind nibbling at my fingers as I write these notes. The garden is dormant, though there are a few flowers here and there that have not read the rules: a small Viburnum tinus, an evergreen shrub, with its cluster of small white …