image via RHS
When we were visiting my mother recently I was amazed to see just how much food for wildlife the old hedge alongside her back garden was presenting to the mammals and birds and of course the odd late flying butterfly and wasp. This stretch of hedge was originally an old field boundary and it illustrates just how much damage to Mother Nature’s larder the destruction of our hedges by intensive style agriculture actually causes. Here we have a 20 yard stretch of mixed natives with an odd cultivated plant creeping in from the garden that is a veritable larder for all sorts of wildlife.
Think of hedgerow food for wildlife and the first fruit to come to mind will be the Bramble or Blackberry. This may be simply because we enjoy a tasty nibble of these glossy black gems ourselves. We might also think of Roses with their red fruit…
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One of the sloping beds
The surrounding garden wall prevented warm air from escaping from the garden on cool nights, thereby allowing frost-sensitive fruit trees to survive, despite the cooling climate. The walled garden is also interesting for its use of sloping beds – orientated to take advantage of the sunny aspect and so aiding the warming of the soil and creating beneficial growing conditions.
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Walking through the pretty featureless, grassed over walled garden you suddenly turn a corner and enter a more intimate, warm, walled garden with blocks of bright colours and interesting foliage. An amazing contrast, this formally laid out garden with a range of exotic plants as well as classic bedding, made me draw breath and smile like a Cheshire Cat!
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Trench composting is an underused way to improve your soil texture and add fertility to your soil. And it has the added bonus of getting rid of those tough old stems of spent sunflowers, sweetcorn and brassicas. We spent a day trench composting the quarter of our allotment in which we shall be growing our roots next year. Many books tell us not to add manure or humus to the patch where you are planning to grow your root crops but we have found by experience that if the trenching is carried out in early autumn it works just fine. As the depth of soil on our plot is less than a border fork deep we need to keep adding to it in an attempt to build up some depth.
The job gets started as Jude, aka Mrs Greenbench or The Undergardener, takes out a 2 foot wide trench down…
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Where’s Wally? 250 Master Gardeners and Composters (including me) line up for the annual group photo
No, not a set from ‘Dr. Who’, just a display of ‘dalek’ and other types of compost bin!
One of two Cakes specially made to celebrate the conference-a masterly effort from a Norfolk Cake maker!
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Nigel Boldero aka 'Old School Gardener'
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