To Walter de Grasse

Dear Walter,

I’m so sorry to have not written last month, but hopefully you’ll understand how busy we’ve been preparing for our daughter’s wedding and more recently the Show Garden I helped with at the Sandringham Flower Show.

Well, the wedding went off pretty well, all things considered, and the hot dry weather we’ve been having held for that important weekend. I think the garden- well the parts visible around the rather large marquee- looked presentable, and I had many compliments on it from amongst the 130 or so people attending. We’re still waiting for the photographs to appear, but I’ll send you some as soon as we have them.

Wow, it’s been hot…

As you know from your own experience, we have had a very long period of dry and sometimes very hot weather of late- I think we ran for around 5 weeks without any rain and last week I clocked a temperature of 39 celsius! This was just before a rather dramatic storm cleared the air- at least for a time.

The wedding was a truly international affair…

Over the last few days a more unsettled weather pattern has arrived and the garden (and us) have had some very welcome ‘usable’ rain. However, it looks like the week is going to become increasingly dry and hot again so I can’t put away the hose pipe just yet.

Having watered pretty consistently in the Kitchen Garden I’m pleased to say that most crops are doing well- Deborah harvested most of the beetroot yesterday and has been pickling these. We’ve had plenty of tomatoes, cucumber, cauliflower, calabrese, courgettes and broad beans and I’m going to chance my arm and finally dig up the potatoes today, though given the dry weather and my early experience of harvesting these, I’m not that hopeful that they’ll amount to much. Here are a few shots of the garden today, focusing on the containers, as they look the most presentable!

Apart from keeping Old School Garden in a reasonable state, the past couple of weeks have seen some focused effort going into the Show Garden at Sandringham and, oh, picking up an award…

That was a ‘Highly Commended’ award at the Norfolk Community Biodiversity Awards for the Church Action Group’s ‘imaginative’ approach to improving biodiversity, including, as you know the planting of an ‘Avenue of Remembrance’ and seeding a piece of waste ground as a wild flower meadow, as well as our approach to managing the churchyard as  meadow environment to encourage a wider selection of wild flowers and other species. Four of us (including a colleague from the Community Payback Team who have been so helpful in our efforts) went along to the awards evening in Norwich recently and picked up our certificate..

Me receiving the award from the Chairman of Norfolk Wildlife Trust

Left to right: Paul Tong (Community Payback), Lorna Wilson, Mary Beatty and me from the CAG

But I guess my focus has been on Sandringham most recently. This show, attended by around 20,000 people, is a traditional country flower show with added attractions, and includes a visit by HRH the Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall. Working with the Prince’s Trust and Grow Organisation we helped 9 young people to experience the creation and construction of a 8 metre square show garden on the theme of ‘A young person’s journey to well being’. It was a sometimes a stressful but over all a very positive experience for me and i think everyone involved. It was great to see how the young people gradually took ownership of the project and design which I’d deliberately planned as a series of different spaces where specific features could be created such as planters, bug hotel, willow obelisks and so on. It was also great to have so many other organisations and companies helping us with plants, features and so on…truly a community effort. And the result was a Silver Gilt Medal and some very positive feedback from the judges and public who visited us. Judge Chris Beardshaw described the garden as fantastic and complimented the team on gpoing for the right approach in getting across a number of messages through different types fo space;’You have to go into the garden to really appreciate it’, he said. He also sang one of the young people’s (Sam) praises for her very eloquent presentation of the garden- ‘the best we heard’ he said. Here’s a gallery of pictures to illustrate the main features of the design and most of those involved!

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What next? Well its back to the church at the weekend as we have our mid summer cut and rake of the church yard and tidying up of some other spaces. I may have mentioned that we have a nice new level trackway up to the churchyard courtesy of local firm JS Asphalt who used old road planings to give us the new surface. We are now contemplating the next stages in our work to improve the facilities at this important community venue, including making the church building accessible for those with a disability as well as improved services, toilets etc. I’m currently looking at possible grant sources  to help us achieve this ‘transformation plan’.

Well, I see that the garden awaits so I must get on with digging the potatoes and transplanting some runner beans and leeks now that we have slightly damper conditions. All the best to Ferdy and enjoy the rest of the summer. Next week we are getting out on our hands and knees at the Aylsham Roman Dig..more of that in due course..

Old School Gardener

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