Category: School and childrens’ Gardening


Dear Walter: Letter from Old School Garden, 28th October 2013

Filed under: Dear Walter - letters/info from Old School Garden, Gardening techniques, School and childrens' Gardening — Leave a comment
28/10/2013
Grasses and autumn leaves are looking good in Old School Garden

Grasses and autumn leaves are looking good in Old School Garden

28th October 2013

To Walter Degrasse

Dear Walter,

I hope you and Lise are well. I guess you’ve been experiencing the warm autumn like us over the last few weeks? This has done wonders for prolonging the flowers and colour in Old School Garden and the combination of these with the golden glow of grasses in the mixed borders looks super- especially in that low October sun.

But it’s also meant that I’ve been hanging on and waiting for things to finish their show so that the ‘autumn clear up’ can truly begin (though I do like to leave some plants whose stems, seed heads or shape survive to provide eye catching winter interest). I’ve just started to get tender things inside for over wintering as well as replacing summer annual displays with something to give us winter and spring colour. The main annuals beds and containers have been cleared and planted up with a combination of spring bulbs, along with Pansies, Violas and Bellis. I’ve also cleared out the greenhouse of the remaining cucumbers and (mostly green) tomatoes, the latter are now resting in a fruit bowl along with a banana to encourage ripening! The harvest has continued with lots of delicious apples, some very good black grapes and runner beans, chard and the last of the courgettes. It’s also been a busy sowing and planting time- crops of Broad Beans, yellow and red Onions, Garlic as well as green manures have all been put in, and I’m having another go at growing Asparagus.

Scabious still looking good in the courtyard garden

Scabious still flowering in the courtyard garden

As you read this we’ll be away visiting our daughter Madeleine and our son-in-law, Diego, in Portugal. So, many other things – bringing in the dahlias, pruning the climbing roses, keeping on top of the leaves, selective cutting back of perennials and dividing and moving some – will all have to await our return. A little late perhaps, but hopefully the mild weather will continue for a couple of weeks!

I’m still helping at the local School with their ‘outdoor learning’ (specifically in the School Garden). I think virtually every child (apart from the very young), has learned about tools and tool safety and harvesting (the School cook had a lovely supply of Red Cabbage, Courgettes, Runner Beans and Carrots to weave into her daily menu). It’s been inspiring to hear their enthusiasm as they open up a runner bean pod and discover the little pink and purple jewels that can become next year’s seeds and how they love to find worms and other critters in the soil! One mum told me the other day how excited her son had been when he brought home the bean I’d let him take away!

They have also learned about the different types of seed and their dispersal, what we do in the Autumn to prepare the soil, and sow and plant certain things, as well as the importance of composting, including looking after the school wormery. The other day this half term’s efforts culminated in an open day focusing on ‘outdoor learning’. Parents linked with their children and took part in a range of activities around the school site including den building and bug hunting. I was mainly involved in fuelling the fire pit where we did some ‘campfire cooking’ (bread and marshmallows on hazel sticks), and helping with:

  • some gardening (the boys particularly like a bit of digging),

  • weather monitoring (we managed to reach 19 degrees C on a beautiful sunny day)

  • making ‘elf houses’ and furniture (and a few elves too),

  • making recycled paper pots and sowing broad beans in them.

I think this event has helped to raise awareness of the good work being done in the ‘outside classroom’ at the school and may even encourage some parents to volunteer to help out at one of the regular ‘garden gang’ days or in other ways. Here are some pictures I took to give you a flavour of what was a  fun and successful day.

A beautiful autumn day
Catching them young…
Elf house making…
An Elf!
Elf house -with elf
Weather monitoring
Den building
Bread and Marshamallows, yummy…
Strawberry runner potting up
Sieving the soil…
Dig dig dig
Paper pots and Broad bean sowing
Sunlit grasses in the wildlife pond

 

The other major activity I’ve been involved with recently is teaching.

As you know from my last letter, I’ve been running a second Garden Design course at the local High School and this is now in its last couple of weeks. The eight participants, have a wide range of different garden design challenges in front of them. They are an enthusiastic group who it’s been a pleasure working with. They are now firming up their design ideas and creating scale drawings of what they want to achieve, and the final evening will focus on how to go about realising these on the ground.

I’m also pleased to say that my first ‘Grow Your Own Food’ course for beginners and novices is running locally, too. Tuesday mornings in a nearby village hall (Foulsham), sees 6 relatively new food growers coming together and both sharing experiences and exploring the ‘keys to success’ in food growing. The second week involved a visit to Old School Garden where I shared (‘warts and all’) my own experiences of food growing, some of the ideas and tips I’ve used and some of the issues confronting me – not least being the need to ‘downsize’ my food production to avoid gluts and surpluses! I shall be introducing a greater level of ornamental planting in the kitchen garden to achieve this, so reducing the productive areas by about a third.

My blog continues to grow both in terms of followers and also in the feedback and ‘conversations’ its enabling around the world. I’ve recently topped 1500 followers on all ‘social media platforms’ and since starting it back in December last year have had over 33,000 views of pages on the site. These are currently averaging about 800-1000 per month at present. Its been especially pleasing to have positive feedback from people who have enjoyed particular articles or items (recycling in the garden seems to be especially popular). Continue reading →

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Dear Walter – letter from Old School Garden, 30th September 2013

Filed under: Dear Walter - letters/info from Old School Garden, Design, Gardening techniques, Grow your own food, School and childrens' Gardening — Leave a comment
30/09/2013

IMG_7431To Walter Degrasse

30th September 2013

Dear Walter,

September has been a month of relative quiet in Old School Garden. Summer has tipped into Autumn and the garden hasn’t needed (?wishful thinking) full throttle attention. The odd weed pulled up, flowers dead headed or staked, hedges trimmed, grass mown (less frequently and less closely). A typical September then, apart from the relatively cold spell we had earlier on which sent me to the wood shed and led to lighting of fires – albeit only once or twice. Still I resisted the temptation to switch on the central heating! Since then we seem to have had something of a mini ‘Indian summer’.

I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how some annuals I planted earlier on have at last come good – Cleome, Cosmos, Nicotiana and Tithonia in particular. A slow start, but they seem to have gone for a sprint finish so to speak! They are looking very good alongside some other late summer perennial colours – Asters, Sedums and Aconitum. And I’m pleased to say that last year’s sowings of Phalaris (‘Chinese Lanterns’) have now turned into beefier plants, just starting to show off their wonderful papery orange ‘lanterns’.

Cosmos, Asters, Achillea, Helianthemum
Aster,Echinops,Macleaya
Cosmos and Asters
Aconitum and Lavatera
Verbena bonariensis and Nicotiana
Fremontodendron
Gleditsia tricanthos
Cercis ‘Forest Pansy’, Echinops and Stipa gigantea
Phalaris
Actea simplex
Cotoneaster
Calamagrostis x acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’
Crab apple’ Red Sentinel’
Sedum matrona
Scabious ‘Vibtant Violet’
Seed heads of Clematis tangutica
One of the mixed borders
Echeveria backed by Melianthus

I’ve continued to harvest  various fruit and veg – Chard is now reaching maturity, Tomatoes, Lettuces and Cucumbers have done really well, and some late sowings of Carrots and Mangetout are looking promising. You may recall that I sowed three seeds of ‘Greek Squash’ sent to me by the Garden Organic Heritage Seed Library – two of these have gone on to produce four or five good-sized squashes, which are now hardening off in the autumn sunshine. Oh, and remember my caterpillar disaster with the Calabrese and Broccoli plants last month? Well, I’ve cleared the bed, and managed to get hold of some young plants of Chinese Broccoli and Spinach, so along with some of my own Red Cabbage seedlings we now have that area once more in production – hopefully they’ll all put on good growth before the onset of winter.

The first windfall apples have been falling in some strong breezes recently. We’ve been collecting some of these as well as early pickings directly from the trees, and very tasty they are too! I can see that the next couple of weeks will be consumed with apple harvesting, and that of course raises the question of where to store them! Our larder could soon be a lot fuller.

The Kitchen Garden
Rainbow Chard
Runner beans ‘Lady Di’
Sunflowers- this monster grew to about 15 feet (5 metres) tall!
Sun flowers bowing to the inevitable
Greek Squash
Windfalls a plenty- if we beat the birds and wasps!
Chilli peppers
Marigolds and Chard

Further afield in my gardening life, I’m pleased to say that the six week Garden Design course I put on last year is once again up and running, with 8 enthusiastic students with a wide range of garden sizes and ideas that I hope to help them develop in the coming weeks. I’ve also planned a one day workshop at nearby Gressenhall Farm and Workhouse where I hope to show people how to get more from their garden through using some of the key elements of garden design. It will also be fun using the gardens at the Museum to illustrate some of these, as i designed some and help to maintain them as a volunteer. As I speak I’m hopeful, too, that the six week beginners course on ‘Growing Your Own’ at nearby Foulsham, will also be viable, but we’ll have to wait and see on that one.

I’ve also started back with my support of gardening and ‘learning outside the classroom’ at the local primary school. I’ve been encouraged by the way the school – and particularly their LOTC Coordinator, is building on the progress we made last year. Over the first half term I’m taking a series of small groups from most classes through some of the basics such as introducing different types of tool and how to use them safely; the importance of clearing and preparing the soil during the autumn; harvesting some of the produce we planted last season (there are some seriously impressive carrots that seem to have thrived on neglect!); gathering different types of seed for next year; how different plants propagate themselves and sowing broad beans, garlic and onions as well as some green manures.  The School is also carrying out an international project on composting and organic gardening to which I’m contributing. So a busy half term! It’s always great working with such enthusiastic youngsters, reawakening my own sense of wonder at nature as they dig over the soil and are delighted to discover worms, grubs and creepy crawlies!

On Saturday I went to Garden Organic’s HQ at Ryton, near Coventry, for their annual conference for Master Gardeners and Composters. Around 30 of my colleagues from Norfolk went along and were joined by over 200 other Master Gardeners and Composters from a number of other areas around the country. It was a very interesting and inspiring day. I attended some workshops on community composting, reaching ‘hard to reach’ communities and ‘love your bugs’- all about the goodies and baddies in the garden. Most inspiring was a talk by veteran naturalist Chris Baines, looking at ‘The Nature of the Future’. I’ll do a fuller article on this event later in the week, but here are a couple of pics from the ‘Naturalistic’ area of the gardens, which looked wonderful – as did the many other different gardens which demonstrate a range of gardening techniques and planting arrangements.

So, old friend, that just about brings you up to date for the last few weeks in my gardening life at Old School Garden and beyond. A mellow and measured time when its been possible to enjoy the late summer colour and reap the fruits (and veg) of my labours earlier in the year! No doubt you’re well ahead of me with your autumn garden jobs, but in case you’re not and need some ideas, I’ll be posting my regular monthly item on tasks in the garden for the new month tomorrow, so I hope that proves useful. Happy Gardening!

Old School Gardener

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Learning About Seeds

Filed under: School and childrens' Gardening, Wildlife and Nature — Leave a comment
25/09/2013

deltagardener's avatarThat Bloomin' Garden

This weeks garden class with the grade three students was a lot of fun. We learned about how seeds travel and where the seeds are on the plant. To start the day they had to spend ten minutes observing in the garden. This way they can see how the seasons change and the effect it has on the plants. They soon noticed that the sunflowers had dropped their heads. When I asked them why this had happened, they were quick to say that the flowers was preparing to drop its seeds. Once we had our discussion about what they had observed I asked if they had noticed anything else that wasn’t a plant. One little girl piped up and said, ” I saw that there are sticks around the garden.” I chuckled at this as she was referring to our new fence as sticks.

lesson about seeds

To learn about the different seed…

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PicPost: Bucket Shop

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Filed under: Gardening equipment and tools, PicPosts- great photographs, Recycling projects, School and childrens' Gardening — Leave a comment
05/08/2013

Picpost: Bucket Shop

‘Students at Armstrong School in Newcastle have been creating more storage solutions for their shed with Sarah Carrie (Schools Advisor for the North East).
As well as their brilliant welly rack (post from 28 June), they have made this smart tool holder to keep long handled tool handles upright and neat.
To make it they:
Used 4 old plastic plant pots
Cut the bottoms off 2 of them
Screwed these 2 pots onto the shed wall
Fixed the other 2 plant pots below the others onto the floor.’

via RHS Campaign for School Gardening

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Picpost: High Life

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Filed under: Design, PicPosts- great photographs, Play, School and childrens' Gardening, Wildlife and Nature — 2 Comments
03/08/2013

Picpost: High Life

via Growveg

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Dear Walter: letter from Old School Garden 22nd July 2013

Filed under: Dear Walter - letters/info from Old School Garden, Gardening techniques, Grow your own food, Heritage Gardens & gardening, School and childrens' Gardening — Leave a comment
22/07/2013
The blckbirds nesting among the vine in the Courtyard Garden at Old School Garden- picture by Gabbie Joyce and Paul Hill

The blackbirds nesting among the vine in the Courtyard Garden at Old School Garden- picture by Gabbie Joyce and Paul Young

To Walter Degrasse

Dear Walter,

It’s coming to the end of one of the driest and hottest July’s we’ve had in nearly 10 years. Today looks like it will be the hottest of the year to date – somewhere in the upper 20s if not low 30s Celsius in our corner of England (and higher elsewhere)! Having spent a couple of hours this morning planting out the last of my summer annuals, thinning and transplanting wallflowers and planting some leeks, I’ve escaped the worst of the heat and come inside to drop you a line!

As you can imagine, the last few weeks have been very busy on several gardening fronts. I guess the most significant event was our first garden opening last week, which I’ve done a separate article about. This was great fun and I was very pleased with the way the garden looked and the many positive comments from the 70+ visitors. We raised over £300 too which will be going to three local ‘good causes’.

One of these is ‘Master Gardener’, where I continue to offer my voluntary advice and help to those starting  to grow their own food. Gabbie, the local co-ordinator, has come up with the idea of using the money we raised as a special fund to be tapped into by Norfolk Master Gardeners to purchase small items to help their households, groups and other new growers- I’ll tell you more about this in due course. I’ve attended a few events recently and had fun talking with a range of people about their food growing experiences and maybe even helped to recruit a few new households. The latest event was the ‘Destination Aylsham’ Fun Day yesterday, which I helped out at with fellow Master Composter Sally Wilson- Town and co-ordinator David Hawkyard. Well over 70 people came over to discuss composting and ‘growing your own’, though my period at the stall seemed to coincide with the quieter, ‘wind down’ phase towards the end. Still,  no matter, we seem to have promoted composting and food growing to a few more people – and I managed to sell some plants and produce too!

Some produce for sale at Aylsham ‘Fun Day’
The compost game
Master Gardener and Composter stand at the ‘Fun Day’

I’ve done my last session this academic year at Cawston Primary School, where we had great fun harvesting potatoes, broad beans and a few onions. In truth, with the exception of the Broad Beans, these were harvested a little too soon, because this was the last opportunity for the children to garden before their holidays which begin on Thursday. Still, the potatoes were of a good size and a reasonable quantity and will be used in the school kitchen this week along with the beans and some of my donated home grown produce (we’ve had some enormous Calabrese and Cauliflowers lately). The children also continued to dig out the old compost bins so that we can make a new start there in the Autumn. However, it’s disappointing that we’ve not been able to keep on top of the weeding in the bog garden around  the wildlife pond (which is also looking extremely dry), as many weeds have now set seed, so that will be an added problem for us in the Autumn, when  hopefully the soil will be damper and weeding easier. However, the Outdoor Learning Co-ordinator , Sharon, tells me that the pond has been a real winner with the children and has yielded examples of a wide range of insect and other wildlife.

A good crop of peas nearly ready for picking
Harvesting Broad Beans at Cawston Primary School
..and onions
Onions, a little early
Clearign the ground where the broad Beans were… what next?
Some of the harvest
Potatoes- ‘buried treasure’…
They’re here somewhere…
Here they are….
I could eat this right now…
One more for the bucket…
Who’s found the biggest, and smallest potato?
Charlotte posing, not digging out the compost bin..

The gardens at Gressenhall Farm and Workhouse Museum are struggling in the sun and heat, but the planting and care taken earlier in the year by myself and other volunteer gardeners seem to be paying off. The rambling rose ‘Rambling Rector’ in the Wildife Garden looks particularly splendid as it covers the arbour and adjoining wall, where I and my friend Steve spent an hour or two pruning and tying in last autumn.

‘Rambling Rector’ over the arbour at Gressenhall
..and over the adjacent wall

 

At home, Old School Garden is also struggling in the heat, and evening watering sessions of hand held spray and sprinkler have lasted a good few hours in recent weeks – and still many new plantings are wilting! Anyway, the long borders are looking great, though with a few gaps after shearing back the oriental poppies. I’m hoping that my strategically placed pots of tender perennials and plantings of annuals will soon plug these and the overall show will reach a crescendo in a few weeks time. The kitchen garden has proved to be very productive to date, though we  continue to get problems with pests such as pigeons and to a lesser extent blackbirds and aphids. I’ve noticed a few Cabbage White butterflies recently, but hopefully with my planting of Nasturtiums and netting of my Brassicas, we’ll not be too badly affected by their hungry green caterpillars! So far we’ve had crops of :

  • Potatoes – though I had to lift many of these a bit early as blight had started to affect them

  • Calabrese  -huge heads from the F1 variety ‘Beaumont’

  • Cauiliflowers- though a few heads were ‘blown’ as we couldn’t keep up with the supply!

  • Mange Tout – despite early pigeon attacks!

  • Celery – too much to cope with!

  • Carrots – a reasonable first crop though many were twisted and misshapen, possibly a combination of too rich and stony soil

  • Lettucs – a few varieties from the garden have tasted good along with some ‘cut and come again’ varieties in pots.

  • Tomatoes – just a few of the smaller, golden variety to date, but plenty on the plants in the greenhouse, ready for swelling and ripening.

  • Courgettes – the start of what promises to be a bumper year, especially as my friend Steve has given me four ‘Patty Pan’ plants to go with the two green varieties he’d already supplied!

  • Strawberries-  you remember I’d started the process of relocating the strawberry bed? Well the new plants seem to have taken well, though, as youd’ expect I didn’t let them flower or fruit this first year, but the old plants I left hoping for ‘one more year’ of fruit were a disaster. Very few fruits and what there were the blackbirds, slugs and mould seem to have taken. So for the first time in many years I actually bought two punnets of strawberries!

  • Raspberries – these are coming on well and we’ve enjoyed a few days supply so far, though the pigeons, despite my various ‘bird scarers’, seem to be enjoying themselves and breaking off the fruiting stems as they use them like ladder to go up and down the canes!

  • Garlic – most now harvested but some along with the onions are just drying  out before storing

  • Broad Beans – a good crop of a rosy pink variety, though when cooked their attractive colour seems to turn a rather dull grey, but they taste just fine!

  • Gooseberries- first bush harvested , two red varieties to come this weekend

  • Blackcurrants- two bushes harvested and a lot frozen, with one more to come shortly

An unusual ‘black’ Petunia in one of the hanging baskets at Old School Garden
Newly planted Ladybird Poppies, Lavatera ‘Mont Blanc’ and Physalis (‘Chinese lanterns’) in the front gardens
The Arbour in the Kitchen Garden
View along one of the Long Borders
One of several fine Cauliflowers- ‘Snowball’

Later today, I’ll be sowing some further crops of Lettuce, Mange Tout, Carrots and Cabbage as well as some Pansies I got from the Royal Norfolk Show and which  should provide us with some autumn and winter colour. That’s if it is not too hot of course.

Well, old friend, I see that it’s about time for lunch, so I’ll close for now and wish you and your good wife ‘Ferdy’ well. By the way, would she mind terribly if I called her by her second name, which I find so much more attractive? Lise seems to capture her elegant beauty a lot more than that  nickname she got all those years ago at University! We’re looking forward to seeing you both here at Old School Garden in a week or two’s time – hopefully the garden will still look good and the weather will mean we can enjoy some warm summer evenings on the terrace with some good food, and even better wine!

all the best

Old School Gardener

Other posts in this series:

Dear Walter…. letter from Old School Garden 21st June 2013

Dear Walter….letter from Old School Garden, 20th May 2013

Dear Walter….letter from Old School Garden, 18th April May 2013

Dear Walter….letter from Old School Garden, 11th March 2013

Dear Walter… letter from Old School Garden: 15th February 2013

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PicPost: Veggy Heaven

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Filed under: Community Gardening, Design, Grow your own food, PicPosts- great photographs, School and childrens' Gardening — 6 Comments
27/06/2013

PicPost: Veggy Heaven

from Gardenphotos.com, via Growveg

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How About a Game of Checkers?

Filed under: Community Gardening, Play, School and childrens' Gardening — Leave a comment
23/06/2013

I love this idea and want to try it at the ‘Curiosity Corner’ garden at the Museum where I volunteer.

deltagardener's avatarThat Bloomin' Garden

 

IMG_6756

You can always tell I work with children from the crazy ideas I come up with. A couple of months ago I saw this idea online and just had to create one at our community garden. Our children’s garden has a seating area made with old stumps. Surely I could spare one for a game board. I knew the children that visit the garden would enjoy a game of checkers if I made one for them to use. For all the instructions on how I created the board and the mistakes I learned along the way, click here to read my post.

checkers in the garden

Once I had completed the checker board it was ready to use, but was it? I came by one day to see that someone had played using shells and sticks. Unfortunately the sticks kept blowing away.  This girl had to get an idea going for game pieces…

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Dear Walter: letter from Old School Garden 21st June 2013

Filed under: Dear Walter - letters/info from Old School Garden, Gardening techniques, Heritage Gardens & gardening, School and childrens' Gardening — 2 Comments
21/06/2013
The Kitchen Garden at Old School Garden

The Kitchen Garden at Old School Garden

To Walter Degrasse

Dear Walter,

As I write to you on midsummer day it’s cloudy and rain threatens. We have had some warm spells and even some sunshine, but you get the feeling that ‘proper summer’ has yet to find its way to Norfolk. I know that you’ve had pretty similar weather in your neck of the woods and no doubt you’re as curious as me as to the way the ‘late’ (read almost non-existent) spring has had an impact on the plants. A few pointers from Old School Garden as I write:

  • the Magnolia is still in flower as are the Siberian Wallflowers, Pansies and Violas
  • Sweet Williams are just about coming into flower but the pink Peonies, though with huge fat flower buds, have yet to fully unfurl (having said that the earlier, red varieties have been and gone)
  • Irises are looking good (though last year’s Iris Rust problem has retuned to some)
  • Carrots and Broad beans probably need a further week or two to be fully ready for harvesting
  • Second early (but not first early) potatoes are flowering
  • Lettuces are ready to crop

So it’s a story of some things flowering late and running into other things which is making for some interesting combinations and a few weeks of intense colour; certainly the best show at this time of year I can remember for some time!

Rather than spend a lot of words telling you about my gardening activities in the last month I thought that I’d let ‘the pictures do the talking’ so I’ve included three photo galleries and will give you a few guiding comments for each. The first one is a few pictures of the Gardens at Gressenhall Farm and Workhouse Museum, where the Education Garden I redesigned and with volunteer support, replanted last year is looking superb. A mass of pink and orange oriental poppies along with Salvia ‘Mainacht’  with the billowing leaves of Macleaya in the background, are putting on a wonderful show, remarked on by many visitors, it appears.

There’s a call for me to provide some information on the plants included in the borders, so I’ll have to dig out my original design and plant lists and put together some sort of illustrated guide. Likewise, after a clean out and weed, the Wildlife Garden, and especially the pond and bog areas, are filling out nicely, though there doesn’t appear to be much wildlife evident to date. Monday is going to be something special here as BBC Radio 4’s ‘Gardeners’ Question Time’ is being recorded at the Museum and I’ll be on hand to help guide the audience and provide some information on the gardens. I’m not sure when this is broadcast but I’ll let you know when I’m sure, though I know that you’re a regular listener like me.

Gressenhall Farm & Workhouse Museum- The Wildife Pond
A School Group visting Cherry Tree Cottage Garden
Oriental Poppies in the Education Garden
Fellow gardeners Steve, Michael and Lynne ‘chewing the cud’
Sunny border in the Education Garden
Marigolds leading to the sunny border
‘Curiosity Corner’- a garden for the under 5’s

My voluntary work at the local Primary school continues with a regular weekly slot working with groups of children of different ages in the School Garden. You may have seen my recent post on the vertical planters we’ve made out of old wooden pallets – these are looking very colourful alongside the playground and I’m pleased to say that the children are being diligent in their watering duties. I’m going over there later today so will have a quick look to see that they’re holding up – I’m not sure the compost will hold in place especially if it gets at all dry. At yesterday’s session we weeded around the various veg beds and cracked open the first pods of Broad Beans which the children eagerly popped into their mouths – once I’d assured them that they would be deliciously sweet and tender – there came  a predictable ‘hmmm, yummy’ in response!

The other crops are all coming along well, and the attention to regular weeding and watering has really paid off this year, so we should be cropping potatoes, onions, cabbages, calabrese, peas, runner and broad beans, turnips and carrots soon! The other big  job was to empty out the wooden compost bins which have been clogged up with grass, sticks and soil over the years and are in real need of starting over once more. Hopefully, we’ll get this finished off today and we can then get more of a systematic approach to adding food peelings etc. from the kitchen as well as ‘green waste’ from the school lunches. The wormery seems to be going well, and the School Cook is pleased that the refuse collectors are now collecting food waste for composting at a local centre, too.

My other Master Gardener activity is picking up a bit. I’m doing stints at the Norfolk Show next week and also an event in a nearby village where some Lottery cash looks like it’s going to make some new adult education classes possible, including something from me on growing your own food or maybe design, depending on the level of interest. I’m going along to an open day on this to gauge interest and promote both Master Gardener and the idea of the courses, so we’ll see if anything comes of that.

Cawston primary School- weeding the cabbages and calabrese
The ‘joy of weeding’ – onions and courgettes
Sorting out the compost bins
Overview of the various beds in the School Garden
The pond
Potatoes well on the way
Broad beans in flower and pod
Turnips and carrots awaiting thinning
Some new trellis panels I erected recently

As far as Old School Garden goes, I’ve mentioned the great show we’ve had recently so will let the photographs give you the details! Its been a month of systematic weeding around the different borders, finishing off staking the herbaceous perennials, dead heading and recently planting out the many annuals I’ve een raising from seed to plug gaps etc. I must say I’m pleased with the result, and after visiting a few gardens recently we’ve decided to open ours for charity in mid July. I’ll let you have details in due course, but we hope to make this a lively afternoon with advice from  my friends in the Master Gardener and Master Composter projects and of course plant sales and some delicious tea and cakes!

I hope that you enjoy the picture gallery which shows a few shots of different parts of the garden taken yesterday. As I was walking around I spotted a female blackbird raiding my cold frame and carrying off some poppy seedlings (and compost) in her beak! Having seen her later in the courtyard garden I suspect she’s gathering material for a new nest! We do seem to have had a lot of Blackbirds this year and they seem intent on disturbing the wood chip mulch I put on the long borders in search of food, with the result that sweeping the paths is rapidly becoming a daily chore!

Welcome to Old School Garden!
Warm if not sunny
Golden hop and blue Geraniums
Hanging baskets getting established
View across front gardens
Rose and sweet Williams- not quite in flower
View across front gardens
Orinetal Poppy- ‘Patty’s Plum’
Allium cristophii
Sweet Williams just in flower
Echeveria
Inside the greenhouse- tomatoes, peppers.squash and white foxgloves -being brought on for next year
Entrance to the Kitchen Garden
Rainbow Chard that over wintered and I let grow just to see what it looked like- fascinating and of great ornamental value- but not very tasty?
Potatoes coming on
Lettuces ready
Hostas in the courtyard
My cracked terracotta pot held together by a belt- still attractive for now!
The courtyard
‘Suzy Squirrel’ (weathervane) and that pesky blackbird!

Well,  matey, I hope this little update finds you and your good lady in the best of health. It’s great that you’re now well on the road to recovery and no doubt pleased that you can get outside and dig your patch once more. Did you manage to find any paid garden help? I know that the grass cutting is your biggest nightmare and this is one thing you could do with some help on. Or maybe you might think about turning some of that grass into flowering meadow? I’ve seen some lovely examples of mown paths through long grass recently that must be less maintenance heavy and more wildlife friendly too – worth a thought.

Well, bye for now and I’ll give you a further update next month, though in the mean time I’ll do a post next week about how the recording of ‘GQT’ goes and my experiences at the Norfolk Show.

all the best

Old School Gardener

Other posts in this series:

Dear Walter….letter from Old School Garden, 20th May 2013

Dear Walter….letter from Old School Garden, 18th April May 2013

Dear Walter….letter from Old School Garden, 11th March 2013

Dear Walter… letter from Old School Garden: 15th February 2013

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Ladner Elementary School Garden Grand Opening

Filed under: Community Gardening, School and childrens' Gardening — Leave a comment
16/06/2013

Congratulations to everyone involved in this wonderful project!

deltagardener's avatarThat Bloomin' Garden

Yesterday I attended the grand opening of the Ladner Elementary school garden. This school garden has exceeded everyone’s expectations. The community of Ladner really came together and everyone pitched in where they could. From shovelling soil to building a new shed and helping to transport the old garden from Kirkland House, so many volunteered to help out. It just shows you what a great community we have here in Delta.

School garden

The day began with a ribbon cutting ceremony. From left to right, Kathy VanAllen, grade 1 teacher, Jim Hope, Vice-Principal, Donna Boydston, retired grade 1 teacher, Jan Storer and Yvonne Carr.

school garden

Just check out the long-handled grass shears they are using to cut the ribbon. No, not just scissors will do for the garden ladies. Garden lady, Joan made it into this photo. What a wonderful moment after all the hard work! Way to go everyone!

school garden

The garden isn’t just…

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